Tom Maxwell of Hellyeah thinks traveling US metal fests are dead

Posted by on August 13, 2015

After playing this year’s beleaguered Mayhem Festival, with controversial comments from tour co-founder Kevin Lyman and Slayer’s Kerry King, Tom Maxwell from Hellyeah gives his opinion on the traveling festival format here in the United States.

Said Tom Maxwell in a recent interview with Pop Culture Madness:

“I think the traveling festival is probably gonna die — unless some new bands emerge or something like that start… unless they start branching out. I think they’re gonna just die because you can’t compete with… You have all your radio stations coming up now, popping up, and they’re putting on their festivals, in their town, and it’s all over. And they call it, what is it? ‘Loudest Month.’ And it can continue on, with more stations that get behind doing that kind of thing. Which I think is cooler anyway, because the radio stations get fully behind it, they’re pumping it non-stope; it’s like feeding water to the masses. They’re just soaking it in, and they’re there. Every radio festival that I’ve ever been to has been fucking cool — even in the States. They’re picking up exactly what they’re doing in Europe. Now, in Europe, those festivals are part of culture now, and that’s what needs to happen here.”

On this year’s Mayhem line up, Maxwell said that he, “was expecting this year to have Slipknot again, or something. I know it’s always Avenged Sevenfold or Slipnot and Five Finger (Death Punch) and, you know… Who else is out there?”

This is pretty much the same thing that Tom Maxwell said back in February, before the wheels fell off of this year’s Mayhem Festival.

“There’s word, and they’re talking about us maybe doing one of the summer tours here, but when we saw I don’t know, man… To me, these summer tours that are… Ozzfest did it right. A lot of great bands broke from that. And I’m not saying that the bands that are playing the summer tours now aren’t good, but I just don’t think there’s enough variety. It’s like, you get the same fucking bands year after year after year, it becomes just kind of stagnant to me.”

Looks like Maxwell saw the writing on the wall even before they signed up for this year’s Mayhem Fest.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO2Z28UIAsw[/youtube]

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