Last week while at a show here in NYC, we heard a rumor about the supposed lineup of this summer’s Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival. Over the weekend, the rumor we heard got repeated by theprp, and while the official lineup announcement isn’t coming until April 13, here are six of the bands that are reportedly playing this Summer’s incarnation of the fest:
Slayer
King Diamond
HELLYEAH
The Devil Wears Prada
Whitechapel
Thy Art is Murder
Apparently, there will be a Victory Records stage as well. On initial viewing, the lineup feels a little underwhelming. While we’d predicted Slayer would be a headliner with their album coming out this year, they’d played Mayhem in 2012 as well. King Diamond is a great get, given that he hasn’t done a full-fledged tour in years. But while he sold out 2,500 seat arenas on his most recent tour, but the one before that, he was playing places like BB Kings in New York that hold 1,000. And nothing against those two or the other bands announced so far, but none of them feel like arena headliners with the possible exception of Slayer. If this is the tour lineup, and those six bands are the headliners, it’s hard to imagine the tour will be a full-fledged arena tour.
