The 2025 edition of German heavy metal festival Wacken Open Air (WOA) has sold out, organisers have announced.

The majority of the 85,000 tickets were snapped up days after the 4 August pre-sale, with the remainder shifted by 30 September.

The 2024 event holds the title for the fastest sell-out, with tickets flying off the shelf in four and a half hours and smashing the previous record of six hours set for 2023’s event.

“It’s actually not a big surprise [it didn’t sell out in one day] because that’s only happened twice; we had years where we needed 10 months to sell it out. We are almost sold out, so it’s all good,” WOA booker Jan Quiel said at last week’s International Festival Forum.

Last month, WOA organisers confirmed 34 bands for the 34th edition including Machine Head, Saltatio Mortis, Papa Roach, Gojira, Apocalyptica, Saxon, Within Temptation, Dimmu Borgir, Ministry, Michael Schenker, Peyton Parrish, Beyond The Black and Clawfinger.

“We are once again more than grateful for your endless support and trust”

Discussing the festival’s booking strategy, Quiel told IFF delegates: “We always do a classic act because it’s always part of the DNA of the festival. So a band like Scorpions is always a huge, cool headliner for us as well. But we definitely keep in mind that we have to grow a younger audience as well.

“I always keep some spots [open]. Let’s say the last four to five slots, I book in March or April in case there are new, up-and-coming artists, such as Sleep Token when they were growing in Germany. And so that was one of the few slots I had left and I could put them on.”

The 2024 edition of WOA was headlined by Scorpions, Korn, Amon Amarth and Blind Guardian, and was a return to form after the weather-related struggles in 2023.

“It’s time to say thank you again!” says founder and organiser Thomas Jensen. “This year we celebrated the 33rd edition of the Wacken Open Air with you during best weather conditions and the new arrival concept also worked and took you all to the Holy Ground without any problems and traffic jams. Now we can also announce that Wacken Open Air 2025 is SOLD OUT and we are once again more than grateful for your endless support and trust!”

WOA returns to Wacken, Schleswig-Holstein, between 30 July to 2 August 2025.

WOA, Tuska Festival, K2 Agency and Catch 22 surveyed the state of the metal scene at the recent IFF. Read the takeaways from the panel here.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

The ups and downs of the metal sector – and the lessons the genre can offer the mainstream scene – were pored over in a candid discussion at the International Festival Forum (IFF) in London.

Jan Quiel of Wacken Open Air chaired the Metal: Keeping in time, shredding old rules panel, which brought together Jouni Markkanen, promoter of Finland’s Tuska Festival, K2 Agency’s Sharon Richardson and Merle Doering, owner and MD of Catch 22 agency.

A key question centred on the lessons other events could learn from metal’s enduring ability to nurture a dedicated fanbase.

“Metal festivals are not focused on such a tiny pool of super-hot bands,” said Markkanen. “I don’t focus only on the headliners, but on the balance. You need to have a very strong start to the day; the party needs to start when the gate opens and it needs to last until the gate closes.

“At Tuska, we never made the mistake of just putting on one massive band because then it is like a park concert with a few support bands. Of course, somebody is closing the night, but it’s the collection of art for the weekend. You are trying to serve the wider audience; we are not just looking at modern metal bands, there is a twist of all genres here and there. Communication with the audience is super-important.”

“The pool of available bands was diminishing and we were like, ‘Okay, we need to find a new batch – a new style – to get the audience average age down.'”

Quiel added the metal “community” had bred fan loyalty through the years, although Doering pointed out that happened organically.

“I don’t think that can be learned,” she advised. “In pop music, you can have a one-hit wonder, but nobody cares about them the next year because they’re on to the next trend. I grew up very close to Wacken, and we went to Wacken on the first weekend of August. It didn’t matter who played; that was just what we did. And that’s a thing with metal culture – people identify very strongly with the festivals.”

The panellists also shared how they had succeeded in attracting a younger demographic in recent years, with Markkanen explaining he had changed his booking strategy “quite drastically” over the last few years, leading to fresh headliners such as Ghost, Electric Callboy and Lorna Shore.

“The audience was getting older and older,” he said. “The pool of available bands was diminishing and we were like, ‘Okay, we need to find a new batch of bands – a new style – to get the audience average age down.’ We didn’t do it in one stroke, but added more modern stuff here and there.”

Markkanen noted that this year’s booking of electronic rock band Pendulum was greeted with a frosty response on social media, yet their set attracted the festival’s third biggest crowd ever.

“Festival booking has become a fight for smaller to medium-sized bands, because so many bands want to tour and there are so few slots”

“Trying to find new ways of shocking the audience is nothing bad,” he added. “Of course, the old audience says that, ‘Markkanen has ruined the festival, Tuska has nothing to see anymore.’ But we grew from 15,000-cap to 23,000 and we’re selling out.”

On a similar theme, Richardson noted that K2 achieved a “phenomenal” result after securing a slot for Canadian metal band Spiritbox on the Reading & Leeds bill.

“Your job as an agent is to build that artist profile, but to get longevity out of an artist, so the slots for festivals are really important,” she said. “Reading & Leeds nowadays is more of a pop-indie festival, so for Spiritbox to play on the main stage was really difficult for them. But they won the crowd around, and it was a really good result in the fact that we put Alexandra Palace on sale around [their performances] – that’s 10,500-capacity – and it sold out in two and a half weeks, which was a phenomenal result from taking a risk.”

Wrapping up the session, Doering stressed that the metal scene was not without its struggles.

“A lot of changes need to happen because we are facing a lot of challenges,” she cautioned. “I don’t think the scene is necessarily handling the challenges very well overall, but generally it is adapting. Festival booking has become a fight for smaller to medium-sized bands, because so many bands want to tour and there are so few slots.

“At least for me, there’s a bigger threshold to taking on bands from North America because the cost of bringing them over are so much higher… Building a smaller act, especially from abroad – and you probably all know what flight costs are like nowadays – is so much more challenging. The financial situation of the band is something that comes up very early on, which was probably not the case to the same degree 10 years ago.”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Forged in steel and wrapped in denim and leather, to outsiders it can seem like there’s an admirable immovability about the world of live metal. Ear-rattling volume. Banged heads. An often bruised and bloodied fanbase willing to stick by their favourites through thick and thin.

Beyond the hairy, tattooed surface of the scene, however, there are changes afoot. With the post-Covid hangover of delayed tours and customer uncertainty finally fading, fans and festivals are looking to the future, with a boom in new bands, innovations, and market players not seen for decades.

“I think the metal scene is at its healthiest point right now,” says Andy Copping, executive president of touring at Live Nation UK and lead booker for Download Festival, which celebrated its 21st edition this year, with 75,000 attendees.

“Heritage acts like Metallica, Iron Maiden, and AC/DC are doing bigger business than they’ve ever done. The next generation of headliners – Bring Me The Horizon, Lamb of God, Trivium, Bullet for My Valentine, Parkway Drive, Ghost – are lining up. And there’s a whole other generation on the rise: Lorna Shore, Loathe, Spiritbox, and Sleep Token [see page 54], who are absolutely taking the world by storm.”

Indeed, Metallica’s M72 World Tour – delivering two unique shows in each of nine cities – grossed an impressive $125.8m across its first 18 dates in 2023, with 1.2m tickets sold. Iron Maiden saw their highest-ever sales, 45 years into their career, including breaking records for an international act in Colombia with 42,000 tickets for their 24 November show at El Campín Stadium snapped up in 21 minutes. Bring Me The Horizon’s largely sold-out January UK/Ireland tour, meanwhile, saw the Sheffield contenders follow a long-awaited Download headline with 137,000 tickets over 11 shows.

“The metal scene is at its healthiest point right now”

“People say that rock is dead,” Copping continues. “But rock is never really dead. This is a genre that just keeps pumping and pumping. If you look back at [Download’s predecessor at Donington] Monsters of Rock, that festival didn’t move with the times. In the early 90s, it should’ve embraced bands like Rage Against The Machine, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam but instead it just faded away.

“At Download, we’ve always been very conscious about keeping a finger on the pulse, and taking gambles on bands like Slipknot, who performed their first major festival headline in 2009, and Avenged Sevenfold, who first headlined in 2014 and will do so for a third time this year. Pushing the boundaries is important, whether that be booking ‘electronic’ acts like The Prodigy or Pendulum, or the ‘rock’ headliners we have for 2024. And we benefit from the fact that bands aren’t forced into pigeonholes anymore, like how it used to be that Motörhead fans couldn’t like Bon Jovi.”

Tomasz Ochab of Poland’s Knock Out promotions, whose annual Mystic Festival welcomed between 11,000 and 14,000 fans a day at the start of June, concurs. “There’s a growing openness from metal fans. We’re seeing black metallers Furia tour alongside techno act Zamilska, for instance, and audiences at festivals welcoming everything from punk and hardcore to dark folk and horror rap. That was unthinkable five years ago. Also, it’s possible to combine older and younger acts, like Megadeth and Enter Shikari, which may have to do with the increasingly multi-generational make-up of our audiences, with parents often alongside along their teenagers.”

“Fans are adopting a more genre-fluid attitude towards music consumption”

Breaking the Law
So-called ‘gatekeepers’ of the metal scene take pride in imagined exclusivity. True to Copping’s point, that cynicism has been replaced by excitement. With traditional genre boundaries continuing to blur, and even the heaviest and weirdest outliers engaged on social media, there is an increasing desire from metal fans to experiment and embrace acts outside the box.

“Fans are adopting a more genre-fluid attitude towards music consumption, pushing the boundaries of what we’ve historically witnessed among metal enthusiasts,” says Chamie McCurry, general manager of the United States’ Danny Wimmer Productions (DWP), who kicked off 2024 with Welcome to Rockville festival breaking company records with over 200,000 in attendance at Florida’s Daytona International Speedway May 9-12.

Their Sonic Temple showcase, which welcomed 138,000 fans across four days in Columbus, Ohio, took place on the following weekend. While tested headliners Foo Fighters and Disturbed were key, the prominent inclusion of acts like Tennessee rapper Jelly Roll, Texan instrumentalists Polyphia and London grime-punks Bob Vylan prove the trend.

“This shift is driving the creation of pioneering hybrid styles within the metal genre, melding disparate sounds in ways that profoundly connect with audiences,” McCurry stresses. “Culturally, it’s seen in unexpected [phenomena] like the integration of metal merchandise into conventional fashion and in groundbreaking collaborations that defy traditional genre constraints.”

“Metal audiences’ tastes are evolving significantly, driven by those new acts”

It’s not just in the festival sphere. After the viral success of 2020 single Hypa Hypa, ‘electronicore’ sensations Electric Callboy skyrocketed post-pandemic, with their synth-heavy sounds inspiring a completely sold-out 2023 German tour [60,000 tickets], including a landmark hometown show at Cologne’s 20,000-cap Lanxess Arena, and an equally packed circuit of the UK’s 1,500-5,000-cap Academy venues. Callboy’s recent collaborators BABYMETAL continued their ‘Kawaii-metal’ expansion with 94 performances across 25 countries and total headline attendance of 240,000.

Andrea Pieroni of Italy’s MC2 Live continues to see the success of tried-and-tested acts (34,000 tickets sold-out for Iron Maiden in Milan, 42,000 sold-out for Rammstein in Padova, and 15,000 for Pantera in Bologna in 2023), but those on the cutting-edge like Bring Me The Horizon (10,000 sold- out), Electric Callboy, Polyphia and Lorna Shore (3,500 each sold out) in Milan are closing in.

“Metal audiences’ tastes are evolving significantly, driven by those new acts,” he tells IQ. “It’s interesting to see how modern bands use their platforms to explore complex themes and social issues. For instance, Lorna Shore’s 2023 album Pain Remains delves deep into existential [rumi- nation] and mental health. Fans resonate with that emotional depth, which in turn drives their important support for the live music industry.”

Julia Frank, head of booking at Wizard Live (and head of Frankfurt’s Green Party), is unsurprised at the trend towards progressiveness in the genre. Citing the 30,000+ tickets sold by Judas Priest across dates in Frankfurt, Munich, and Dortmund earlier this year, and five further German arena shows this summer – twice the numbers done on previous tours – as their greatest recent success, she emphasises how the Birmingham icons are emblematic of metal’s often-hidden heart.

“Others see the long hair, denim and leather, and think nothing’s changed since the 1980s. But it has…”

“Outsiders struggle to see it sometimes but metal has always had the most diverse, inclusive crowd,” she observes. “There’s more queer representation, more women in prominent places. [Motorcycle-straddling Priest frontman] Rob Halford has been a gay icon for what feels like forever. It’s been almost 15 years since Life of Agony’s Mina Caputo and Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace came out as trans.

“In other genres, those things still feel like big developments, but they’ve been going on in this world for a long time. The same thing applies with metalheads’ approach to issues like mental health, climate change, and safe spaces for women. Yes, we have some problematic individuals, but it’s a genre where people tend to have more consideration for each other. Others see the long hair, denim and leather, and think nothing’s changed since the 1980s. But it has…”

Fabian Umiker of Switzerland’s Mainland Promotions confirms metal’s swerve toward the cultural cutting-edge is something that promoters have to be aware of. Fans are buying tickets later, with several recent examples of 30%+ being purchased on the week of the show, for instance. And there is an increased pressure to reach the relevant demographic with targeted marketing.

“Usually in metal, bands have had to work up slowly as an opener or club band and painstakingly climb towards top billing,” Umiker explains. “Now, new bands who work intensely on social media, can blow up very quickly, reaching a big audience all over the world. It feels like a very interesting evolution in this genre, rarely seen since nu-metal bands like Linkin Park in the early-2000s.”

“There’s always a risk that acts who blow up quickly become ‘disposable'”

Luuk van Gestel of Doomstar Booking echoes that caution: “There’s always a risk that acts who blow up quickly become ‘disposable.’ If you’re on TikTok, your album drops, you do a tour cycle, then a tour of way-too-big venues for way too much money. If you don’t draw a crowd, the moment’s already gone. And if you do draw one, you need to manage to pull off that trick again.”

Blood & Thunder
Increasingly, fans’ focus isn’t just on ground-breaking bands but the avenues through which they’re experienced. Events like France’s 60,000-capacity Hellfest and Germany’s 85,000-cap Wacken Open Air now routinely sell out in minutes, with the lure of reputation, onsite art installations, and online buzz ensuring fans’ interest.

Las Vegas’s Sick New World drew a reported 65,000 fans to a one-day event in 2023, with similar numbers in 2024 for a gathering of vintage nu-metal acts like System of a Down, Slipknot, and Korn, and bands influenced by that scene. Meanwhile, more boutique offerings like Norway’s multi-venue Inferno and Beyond The Gates black metal festivals and Czech Republic’s 20,000-cap Obscene Extreme continue to attract specialist crowds.

Scarborough’s Fortress Festival in the UK has been a remarkable recent success, transforming itself from a 650-cap startup to – at 1,750-cap – one of the biggest black metal gatherings in the world, in the space of two short years. “The UK black metal scene forced us into doing this, in a way,” offers Fortress organiser and booker for the UK’s Reaper Agency Gary Stephenson, of the sold-out 2024 event, which featured strong headliners Triptykon and Wolves In The Throne Room, alongside red-hot prospects Blackbraid and Gaerea. Almost 50% of available tickets for 2025 were sold the following day.

“The avenues for discovering new music are narrowing considerably”

“We’d booked numerous weekend black metal events around the UK, which sold out, so starting an event of this size and calibre was the only way to move forward. Our location is part of the appeal, reflecting a steer away from people’s appetites for multiple-day festivals in major cities. They’re crowded, expensive and, for many people, a chore to get to. In comparison, Scarborough is a quiet seaside town. Our venue is situated right on the North Sea, with beautiful views up to the town’s medieval castle.”

Tilburg’s revered (approx 4,500-cap) Roadburn Festival continues to build its brand as a brilliantly curated gathering all about discovery, originality and authenticity.

“The avenues for discovering new music are narrowing considerably,” says booker and head of publicity Becky Laverty. “Where there were once many magazines and digital outlets covering the music we programme, these are diminishing year-on-year. We receive lots of anecdotal feedback that Roadburn, and similar festivals, are replacing those traditional media outlets in terms of discovery and engagement with artists. Our audience is unusually invested in the music, art, and culture on offer.

“Bands and labels have embraced that appetite for the ‘different’ with merchandise offerings like Roadburn-only vinyl variants. Across the festival and band merchandise, and select label stalls, the average spend per attendee is around €75. There are high levels of loyalty to the event, too. Only 16% of attendees were ‘First-timers’ as per our post-festival survey for this year’s event. Comparatively, 57% had attended three or more editions, with half of those describing themselves as ‘Lifers’!”

“Roadburn is an integral part of the calendar now,” agrees Daan Holthuis of 3,000-cap main venue 013 Poppodium. “Thanks to the OFFROAD [local outreach] programme, every third week in April sees the whole city turned upside-down by a festival celebrating the cutting edge in heaviness!”

“Metal is struggling to attract new fans in Asia”

Warriors of the World
Promoters, booking agents, and bands everywhere will tell you that the greatest challenges facing metal’s live industry are not specific to metal: fuel costs following the war in Ukraine; inflation wreaking havoc where ticket prices are generally set a year before bills need to be paid; lack of confidence in a sector where the repeated failure of festivals has left customers sorely out of pocket; and a cost-of-living crisis that makes them reluctant to spend in the first place.

The inherently niche nature of the metal market does have its own pitfalls, though. And some specific solutions. Jesse Liu of Taipei’s ICON Promotions has been promoting heavy music in East Asia for 22 years but sees the genre struggling to compete with others in the region.

“Metal is struggling to attract new fans in Asia,” he says, frankly. “It’s hard to compete with genres like K-Pop, indie, and hip-hop here. As a result, it’s rare for tours here to break even. The fragmentation of the already limited metal fan- base here only adds to the problems for promoters. Suffocation fans won’t go to see a band like Tesseract. Tesseract fans won’t go to see a band like While She Sleeps. And so on. Having those pockets of a couple of hundred fans for each sub-genre means it can be very difficult for promoters to draw over 1,000 fans for a metal show – and, in turn, to attract bigger acts.

“We all do the same thing, around the same time, in different areas, so why not work together”

“For instance, our most recent shows saw Tesseract play to 200 fans, and Haken to 120. To maximise appeal, I’ll normally promote co-headline tours where possible, but in terms of the rewards reaped, it’s rarely the case that two plus two equals four. The recent Klash of the Titans co-headline between In Flames and Kreator at Beijing’s Fu Lang Live- House and the Bandai Namco Shanghai Base was a success, with more than 2,000 tickets sold across both shows. But that was helped by the fact that neither band has played China for over ten years – and it involved a cost of roughly €15,000 for visas to allow the touring party of 22 to enter the country!”

More conventional metal markets are seeing their own squeeze, too, with many promoters commenting on the seemingly excessive increase in band fees, while booking agents point to a combination of (sometimes unrealistic) expectations from band management, increased touring costs in Europe compared to the US, and a cut-throat need to recoup losses sustained over Covid.

The United Festival Force (UFF) is an alliance of seven independent European metal festivals in the month of August to present a united front to agents and bands working in the same market. “It’s been a phenomenal benefit,” says Vicky Hungerford, director of Bloodstock Open Air in the UK.

“We all do the same thing, around the same time, in different areas, so why not work together? It’s about transparency in what we do and what we want to pay. Some of the agents were terrified when it started, but they’ve come to appreciate the positives in just how quickly we get things done. We talk every day. We’ve got a WhatsApp group where we discuss upcoming bands. And we’re all indie promoters who don’t have 1,500 different people to run something past when we want to make a decision. Metal people are well-suited to that setup as we’re all always fighting to be heard. We’re all fans. We’re all united by our passion for this music!”

“It’s taken six or seven years to get to a point where the results really are about how good the bands are rather than how many friends they’ve brought along”

We Will Rise
As the UK’s biggest dedicated metal festival (25,000-cap), Bloodstock isn’t just passionate about tackling challenges in the industry, but also securing its future. Their dedicated Metal 2 The Masses competition has provided a show- case for emerging talent at local battle-of-the-bands-style heats, with every winner receiving a slot on the festival’s New Blood Stage. While older fans demanding luxury aren’t in short supply – Bloodstock’s 1,500 VIP and 300 camper tickets sell out on the day of release – it’s a canny move that not only maintains a feed of new acts, but also builds Bloodstock’s brand amongst younger fans regionally, simultaneously supporting the venues who host the heats.

“It’s about investing in the future,” smiles Hungerford’s sister and co-director Rachael Greenwood. “With social media and TikTok, there is such oversaturation. This is a chance for bands to be really heard, with the local shows generally sold-out at 150-500-capacity venues around the UK and now into Europe. People are buying those tickets to watch bands they’ve never heard before! It’s taken six or seven years to get to a point where the results really are about how good the bands are rather than how many friends they’ve brought along, but local promoters are fully onboard now they’ve realised how good it is for their venues – the type that are often going to the wall.

“Everything is done at the festival’s cost – big top, infrastructure, crew – but seeing bands like Evil Scarecrow going on to draw crowds of well over 10,000 on our main stage fuels the passion we continue to have for the project. It’s investing in metal to keep the industry alive!”

Nigel Melder, senior promoter for Live Nation Australia, echoes the importance of thriving local scenes even on the other side of the world. “There’s been a shift where we’ve seen cities and scenes really getting behind their own more so than for a very long time. That’s led to increased international recognition [and] a lot of eyes globally turning to us as an exporter of the genre.”

“There are the heavyweights whose potential has yet to be truly tested”

As everyone IQ speaks to underlines, nothing is more important than the artists that provide the spark to keep the scene rolling. And they’re continuing to hit bigger highs, harder than ever. Jonathan Almond of Scotland’s Triple G Events highlights the whole host of talent who’ve already lit up 2024 and have the juggernaut momentum to take the genre even further than before.

“Look at a band like Ice Nine Kills. They’ve grown exponentially from selling 90-150 tickets regionally to 1,500 to 2,500 locally and supporting Metallica in stadia. Polaris have gone from opening 700-cap rooms to easily selling-out 1,300. Some have a slower burn, like Counterparts or Stray From The Path, both of whom have put in so much work going slowly from 120-300-cap rooms but now feel the satisfaction as they sell out 700.

“Then there are the heavyweights whose potential has yet to be truly tested. Bad Omens went from Glasgow’s 300-capacity Cathouse to the 700-capacity Garage, selling out months in advance. They’ve since supported Bring Me The Horizon’s UK arena tour and just dropped out of a second stage headline at Download, but we’ve yet to find their ceiling. Likewise, Knocked Loose have made their way onto mainstream US mega-festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo, and just sold-out Glasgow’s 1,300-cap SWG3 without even breaking a sweat – and that was before new album You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To catapulted them even further into the stratosphere. It’s impossible not to feel excited as new bands get that kind of reaction. So, yeah, the future’s bright. And it’s heavy as hell!”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Slovenia’s MetalDays festival will not return, organisers today (9 July) announced in a remarkably candid and lengthy statement.

The five-page statement details a raft of issues and mistakes that ultimately led to the event’s demise, with the organisers apologising for “refunds not returned, unpaid bands, and unsettled production expenses”.

“We made mistakes that, even though they occurred during unprecedented times, should not have been made by promoters with our level of expertise,” it reads.

The laundry list of issues named by organisers includes financial losses caused by Covid-19, severe flooding at the 2023 edition, the cost-of-living crisis and significant operational cost increases.

Organisers say they offered the company and brand to “all the major players” including Live Nation, Festival Republic and Superstruct Entertainment, and approached major festivals to take it over to fulfil obligations that remained.

“Regrettably, despite our best efforts, this did not happen, and it is just not economically feasible to continue,” they added.

“We made mistakes that should not have been made by promoters with our level of expertise”

The statement pointed to Covid-19 cancellations in 2020 and 2021 as the beginning of the downturn for the company, adding that the organisation didn’t have any savings and “almost didn’t get any financial help from the government”.

Despite struggling with regular expenses like office rentals, storage house rentals, and employee wages, organisers admitted they “didn’t change anything regarding our regular expenses”.

“Our judgment was wrong, and it was a mistake to continue our business affairs as if nothing had happened,” they added.

In 2021, MetalDays considered filing for bankruptcy but instead took a private loan to “be able to survive as a company and to slowly return requested refunds”.

“Could we have known this in advance and should we have declared bankruptcy before the 2022 edition? Probably. Now that sounds like the right decision. At the time, it didn’t seem like an option at all. We were too proud and too naive.”

The festival promised to refund tickets to those who didn’t want to roll them over to the 2022 edition but by then, “all production costs had risen (in some cases by 300%), but we were sold out with ticket prices too low that were calculated before March 2020”.

“Should we have declared bankruptcy before the 2022 edition? Probably”

In addition, they had “already used all the loan funds for refunds and to keep the business alive. Without a ticket price increase and with all the unexpected price rises, we kept pushing back the refunds, creating a bad vibe going into an already sensitive [2022] festival edition.”

Prior to the 2022 edition, the festival was due to move from Tolmin to a new venue but plans were hampered by Covid-19. When construction started on a bypass road that split the site, the event’s capacity was slashed from 12,000 to 7,000.

“This not only increased costs but also limited our ability to sell additional tickets at a reasonable price in 2022,” reads the statement. “Managing this was a logistical nightmare that resulted in significant production expenses and visitors’ dissatisfaction.”

Issues surrounding the 2022 edition were compounded by the introduction of a cashless payment system, managed by the festival’s longtime gastronomy partner Amaia Esa. MetalDays alleges that the firm did not honour contracts and unlawfully withheld a significant portion of the money owed to the MetalDays organising company.

The statement also mentioned former crew members setting up a rival metal festival in Tolmin after MetalDays’ final edition at the site, and accused them of igniting a smear campaign in local press.

“In total, well over half a million of private funds were invested by shareholders in MetalDays from 2021 until 2023”

In 2023, the festival attempted to atone for previous issues by “excessively spending” on the lineup. The organisers say they had sold a portion of shares in the MetalDays promoting company, which was invested in the 2023 edition.

“One shareholder also took an additional loan, which was likewise invested in MetalDays 2023. In total, well over half a million of private funds were invested by shareholders in MetalDays from 2021 until 2023, covering both production costs of 2023 and processed refunds.”

Severe flooding cut the 2023 festival short by two days, resulting in further losses for the organisation. Fans showed their sympathy by purchasing pre-sale tickets for 2024 and the festival claims that, with that money, it would have been able to cover all 2023 production expenses, including bands.

“If we could survive this financially, we believe this unfortunate event would create such a strong bond between visitors and that it would have a positive outcome in the end. However crazy this may sound. Unfortunately, promised state aid still didn’t arrive, and this edition lived to be our last one.”

“We are sorry for refunds not returned, unpaid bands, and unsettled production expenses more than you can imagine”

The 2024 edition was cancelled in January, with tickets once again rolled over to 2025, which will not take place.

“We’re not looking for excuses,” concludes the statement. “Our goal is to present the last four MetalDays years and all significant events as they truly happened. We had to think like businessmen when COVID-19 started and we should have declared bankruptcy back then. Being proud, being friendly, and relying on luck has no place in business.

“Many individuals and companies would have not been harmed if this decision had been made at the right time. We wish to apologize to each one of them. We are sorry for refunds not returned, unpaid bands, and unsettled production expenses more than you can imagine. We now know what we could and should have done differently. However, the global pandemic and historic flood created challenges that were too big for us to manage effectively at the time.

“When we return, it will be with something new, exciting, and capable of setting a new trend. And most importantly, funds must be available before the first ticket is sold.”

MetalDays launched in 2013 and has attracted bands including Megadeth, Slayer, Amon Amarth, Volbeat and Sabaton.

Read the full statement here: https://www.metaldays.net/

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

IQ 128, the latest issue of the international live music industry’s favourite magazine, is available to read online now.

In the June/July issue, Gordon Masson goes behind the scenes of Take That’s This Life on Tour, and Derek Robertson charts the success of Switzerland’s leading promoter Gadget Entertainment as the company turns 30.

Elsewhere, Kerrang‘s Sam Law provides an in-depth report on the metal genre, and Adam Woods investigates one of the most robust music markets in the world – Germany.

Readers can also gain insight into the 2024 festival season, find out where some of the first New Bosses are today, and preview the forthcoming IFF (International Festival Forum).

For this edition’s comments and columns, Mamas in Music founder Mary Leay provides encouragement for mothers working in the music business, while MMF’s Manasvi Dethekar shares five takeaways from the association’s recent workshop in collaboration with Futures Forum.

As always, the majority of the magazine’s content will appear online in some form in the next four weeks.

However, if you can’t wait for your fix of essential live music industry features, opinion and analysis, click here to subscribe to IQ from just £8 a month or click here to purchase your print copy.

Check out what you’re missing out on with the limited preview below:

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Slovenia’s MetalDays and the UK’s Bloodstock are partnering to offer rising bands the chance to perform at the corresponding event in 2025.

The initiative will reward the winners of the festivals’ respective emerging talent contests, New Forces and Metal to the Masses.

The victors of New Forces already earn a spot at MetalDays, while Metal to the Masses winners receive a 30-minute slot on the Bloodstock Newblood Stage, along with a raft of other prizes.

“We’re delighted to announce a unique partnership between two outstanding metal festivals”

“We’re delighted to announce a unique partnership between two outstanding metal festivals, providing emerging bands with the opportunity to perform at the corresponding event in 2025,” says a MetalDays statement. “The champion of New Forces 2024 (MetalDays) and the victor of Metal to the Masses 2024 (Bloodstock) will secure a slot at the adjoining festival in 2025. Bands will be chosen by festival representatives shortly after next years event.”

MetalDays returns to Velenje, Slovenia, between 28 July and 3 August, when acts will include Accept, Blind Guardian, Emperor, God is an Astronaut, The Amity Affliction, Caliban, Legion of the Damned, Tiamat, Unleashed and Rage. The final day of MetalDays 2023 had to be cancelled due to Slovenia’s worst-ever floods.

Derbyshire’s Bloodstock, meanwhile, has announced headliners including Opeth, Architects and Amon Amarth for next year’s festival, which is set for 8-11 August. The lineup also includes acts such as Clutch, Malevolence, Carcass, Whitechapel and Flogging Molly.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Wacken Open Air (W:O:A) has rebounded from this year’s weather-related struggles to sell out next year’s festival in record time.

All 85,000 tickets were snapped up in just four-and-a-half hours yesterday evening, smashing the existing record of six hours set for 2023’s event.

Artists including Scorpions, Amon Amorth and In Extremo are already confirmed for W:O:A 2024, which will take place under the Witches & Warlocks banner from 31 July to 3 August.

The news provides a boost for organiser International Concert Service, which was forced to run last week’s festival at a significantly reduced capacity after the site was hit by rain and thunderstorms in the days leading up to it, leaving the camping areas “impassable”.

The 32nd edition of the German metal institution concluded over the weekend, having welcomed the likes of Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Dropkick Murphys, Wardruna, Beartooth, Ensiferum and Pentagram.

Revised numbers indicate that 61,000 people entered the site before no further admissions were allowed (initial police reports put the figure at around 50,000), meaning close to 25,000 legitimate ticket-holders were denied entry. Those fans were given first refusal to buy tickets for next year’s Wacken, priced €333.

“We are more than grateful and humbled for your trust,” says a message from promoters. “Especially after the difficult start of the festival this summer, where a part of our metal family couldn’t celebrate with us, we really appreciate that the community stands by us and sticks together. The fact that all 85,000 tickets are gone is simply amazing!”

Festival co-founder Thomas Jensen estimates the revenue shortfall caused by the capacity reduction to be in excess of €7 million

With tickets for 2023 costing €299, the Superstruct-backed festival’s co-founder Thomas Jensen estimates the revenue shortfall caused by the capacity reduction to be in excess of €7 million.

“It’s a third of our income: 23,500 x 299, and then you get pretty close somewhere,” Jensen tells Watson.

Weather conditions have continued to blight Europe’s festival season. The final day of Slovenia’s MetalDays was scrapped on Friday (4 August) due to torrential rain and flash flooding in the area, which prompted the authorities to issue a state of emergency. The death toll has since climbed to six, prompting prime minister Robert Golob to describe the situation as the country’s worst natural disaster since gaining independence three decades ago.

Elsewhere, Depeche Mode’s scheduled Live Nation Finland-promoted concert at Kaisaniemi Park in Helsinki tomorrow night (8 August) has been cancelled due to forecasted severe weather conditions.

“The health and safety of our fans, crew, and everyone working at the site are our number one priority, and we have been advised by Tukes (the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency) and the local fire department that it could be unsafe to proceed given the forecasted weather conditions,” says a representative for the band.

Other outdoor music events to be disrupted by adverse weather conditions this summer include Pitchfork (US), Bluedot (UK), Primavera (Spain), Dutch festivals Awakenings, Bospop and Wildeburg, Alexandra Palace’s Kaleidoscope Festival and Robbie Williams’ concert in Austria.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

This year’s edition of Download in Germany, the second offshoot edition of the long-running UK rock festival brand, has been cancelled, with organisers citing production issues caused by a busy summer season.

Slipknot, Parkway Drive, Volbeat and The Prodigy were due to headline the event, which would’ve taken place over two days for the first time, from 23 and 24 June at the Hockenheimring, a motor racing circuit situated in the Rhine Valley near the town of Hockenheim.

“Despite the first-class line-up, the massive number of open-air events made organisation and implementation considerably more difficult this summer,” reads a statement from Download Germany organisers Live Nation GSA. “Unfortunately, the associated technical production obstacles proved to be insurmountable.”

Other major festivals that will not return in 2023 include Falls Festival (Australia), Rolling Loud (US), Summerburst (Sweden), Hills of Rock (Bulgaria), InMusic (Croatia), Wireless Germany, Hear Hear (Belgium) and Tempelhof Sounds and Tempelhof Sounds Presents (Germany).

FKP Scorpio CEO Folkert Koopmans recently laid bare the post-pandemic financial struggles faced by festivals, estimating that only 20% are still profitable.

Koopmans revealed that FKP’s flagship festival Hurricane lost money in 2022 despite selling out and warned that the sector is being “overwhelmed by spiralling costs”.

“The associated technical production obstacles proved to be insurmountable”

“We’re struggling with it, trying to keep the costs under control,” he said. “But it’s incredibly difficult. Of course, we also have an extremely high break-even point.”

Fellow German promoter DreamHaus (Rock am Ring/Rock im Park) previously revealed that production costs increased 25–30% for this year’s festival season.

“There are not that many suppliers that can supply festivals of our size so we’re also in a corner, where we can take it or leave it,” said DreamHaus’s Catharine Krämer.

“We could lower the cost of the whole festival experience but this would have a significant impact on the whole quality of it.”

Download Germany is the fourth sister event (after Melbourne, Sydney and Paris) of the UK’s premier rock festival, which returns next week for a 20th edition.

The anniversary event, which takes place over four days for the first time ever, became the fastest-selling in Download’s history.

More than 60 acts have been confirmed for Download Festival 2023, including headliners Bring Me The Horizon, Slipknot and Metallica, with the latter playing two unique sets on the Thursday and Saturday nights.

Architects, Evanescence, Disturbed, Placebo, Parkway Drive and Ghost are also billed to perform at the event, set for 8–11 June at Donington Park in Leicestershire.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Germany’s longstanding heavy metal festival Summer Breeze was exported to South America for the first time, last weekend.

The Brazil debut, also promoted by Silverdust, took place at Memorial da América Latina in São Paulo on 28 and 29 April and drew 10,000 fans each day.

Blind Guardian, Parkway Drive, Kreator, Lamb Of God, Accept, Lord Of The Lost, Testament, Stone Temple Pilots, Skid Row, Sepultura, Stratovarius and Avanstasia were among the acts on the bill.

“An incredible week lies behind us,” says festival founder Achim Ostertag. “It was extremely exciting to see where the differences but also the similarities lie in the process of such a production.

“We are very happy with the first edition and are already looking forward to the next round in São Paulo in 2024”

“Our Brazilian colleagues on-site have done a great job! And then to experience the enthusiasm of the fans for this somewhat different, European concept of a festival was great. We are very happy with the first edition and are already looking forward to the next round in São Paulo in 2024!”

The German edition of Summer Breeze has taken place since 1997, for the first nine years in Abtsgmünd and thereafter in Dinkelsbühl (Bavaria).

Powerwolf, Megadeath, In Flames and Trivium will headline the 2023 edition of the flagship, slated for 16–19 August.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Details of the 20th-anniversary edition of Download, Britain’s biggest heavy metal festival, have been revealed.

Next year’s event will once again take place at Donington Park in Leciestershire and, for the first time ever, will run for four days, from 8–11 June 2023.

More than 60 acts have been confirmed for the 2023 instalment, including headliners Bring Me The Horizon, Slipknot and Metallica, with the latter playing two unique sets on the Thursday and Saturday nights.

In a statement, Metallica said: “We are next-level honoured to once again come back and partake in the Download shenanigans on the hallowed grounds of Castle Donington, which has an unparalleled place in rock history.”

“We are next-level honoured to once again come back and partake in the Download shenanigans”

The band added the two sets would be completely different with no songs repeated.

Architects, Evanescence, Disturbed, Placebo, Parkway Drive and Ghost are also billed to perform at the Live Nation-promoted event.

Other confirmed acts include As December Falls, Asking Alexandria, Aviva, Bambie Thug, Beauty School Dropout, Behemoth, Blackgold, Blind Channel, Bloodywood, Brutus, Crashface, Crawlers, Dead Sara, Elvana, Enola Gay, Fever 333, Fixation, Graphic Nature, GWAR, Hawxx, Ingested, I Prevail, Jazmin Bean.

Also on the 2023 lineup is Kid Bookie, Kid Kapichi, Lake Malice, Lorna Shore, Mod Sun, Monuments, Motionless In White, Municipal Waste, nothing, nowhere., Nova Twins, Polaris, Pupil Slicer, Seether, Set It Off, SiM, Simple Plan, Soen, Soul Glo, Stand Atlantic, Stray From The Path, Taylor Acorn, The Blackout, The Distillers, The Meffs, Terror, Three Days Grace, Touche Amore, VV, Witch Fever.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.