In 2025, Jamey Jasta will bring back the March Metal Meltdown Festival. It's been 20 years since Trivium, The Black Dahlia Murder, Testament and Obituary headlined the last edition in Irvington, NJ and it got us thinking of classic fests we'd love to see just one more time.
Metal festivals have never been so widespread, but many just don't have the mystique of the classics, do they? Here's 10 festivals that went the way of the dodo, but should absolutely come back with a vengeance.
Ozzfest
Created to spit in the face of the snobby Lollapalooza, Ozzfest became an oasis for metalheads across the United States. Just check out the 2005 lineup — Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, Rob Zombie, Mastodon, Killswitch Engage and more. Danny Wimmer Presents has since taken the reigns for the U.S. rock and metal fest, but everyone nostalgic for Ozzfest would save a little extra cash to see it one more time.
Sonisphere
Sonisphere had some fucking epic bills during its eight-year run. In 2010, the fest held the inaugural Big Four shows, where Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax all shared the stage for the first time. Sonisphere traveled to countries like Bulgaria, Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece, with different lineups in each location. 2010 seemed to be the festival’s grandest year, with Iron Maiden, Rammstein, Alice in Chains and Motörhead also gracing the Sonisphere stage.
Monsters of Rock
Monsters of Rock wasn’t just that compilation CD you ordered from the television. It was the metal festival that defined the ‘80s, hosting all the greats from classic heavy metal to glam and hair metal. And of course, when the ‘90s came around, Monsters of Rock hosted some of the greatest Metallica, Pantera and AC/DC performances ever caught on tape.
Mayhem Festival
Remember how great Mayhem Festival was? Not too big, not too small, and with killer headliners like the 1, 2, 3 punch of Slipknot, Slayer and Motörhead in 2012. It ultimately fizzled out after the 2015 Slayer / King Diamond / Hellyeah lineup saw low attendance, but those early 2010s bills were pretty epic.
California Jam
It was one day held 50 years ago, but the 1974 California Jam Festival remains iconic. It set the record for loudest amplification ever installed, the highest paid attendance (250,000 people) and highest gross ever for a music festival. You probably know it best from an iconic daytime Black Sabbath performance where the metal legends played on the rainbow stage and Deep Purple’s headlining gig that ended in Ritchie Blackmore going apeshit on his guitar.
Monterey Pop Music Festival
It came and went like Halley’s Comet, and like the cosmic event, it was once in a lifetime. Many of the greats of psychedelic rock and proto-metal were there for three days in the California fairground, including Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service. The most iconic performance, however, came from Jimi Fucking Hendrix. Monterey Pop isn’t just the best Hendrix performance caught on film it’s also the night he famously set his axe on fire.
Summer Slaughter
Summer Slaughter was the apex of brutal death metal and tech death in the 2000s. The first iterations were headlined by a soon-to-retire Necrophagist, who became synonymous with the fest. Summer Slaughter then leaned into deathcore and prog, giving fans a multitude of extreme styles that divided some, but no doubht influenced the more genre-free bills we see today. The Dillinger Escape Plan playing with Thy Art Is Murder, Cattle Decapitation and Animals as Leaders? I’m in… and who knows – it might be back soon?
Family Values
At nü-metal’s cultural peak, Family Values was the most hyped touring festival in the States. That first lineup was insane — Korn, Limp Bizkit, Rammstein, Orgy and Incubus along with Ice Cube. The inaugural Family Values Festival in 2013 didn’t quite capture that same energy, but with the current resurgence of nü-metal, why not bring Family Values back with Rammstein, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Mudvayne and Static-X? Then throw on the nü generation with acts like H09909, Tallah, City Morgue and Tetrarch.
Orion Music + More
Metallica’s own festival of handpicked acts was a little too ambitious and eclectic for its audience. It lost a shit ton of money, but looking back, it was kind of awesome. In 2012, Metallica played Ride and Lightning and The Black Album in full, gave Ghost an early career boost, and gave slots to awesome underground acts like Landmine Marathon and Liturgy. Sure, Metallica fans didn’t really want to see Modest Mouse or Arctic Monkeys, but if Orion looked more like its 2013 edition (Metallica, RHCP, Deftones) it could do pretty well.
Woodstock
Yes, Woodstock 99 was an unbelievable disaster with riots and sexual assault. Woodstock 50 failed miserably and never even took place, but the historic memory of Woodstock still deserves a Woodstock 94 type of revival. Give the rights to someone who can manage it, create a lineup that actually makes sense, put the profit motive aside for just one weekend and hold an event in the spirit of 1969. It’ll never happen, but we’d all love to see a return to form for the most celebrated and iconic fest in history.
