When Slipknot and Lamb of God announced their tour earlier this year, it seemed like a shot across the bow to the Mayhem Festival. While the tour has been happening every year since 2008, generally by now a band or two has let slip that they’d be playing. With LoG and Slipknot (as well as Bullet for My Valentine) touring, there aren’t a ton of marquee acts out there that a) haven’t played last year or b) might be too expensive/big to join a touring festival. However, it’s been announced by tour co-founder Kevin Lyman that the tour will indeed happen this year, and the announcement will be coming on April 13th. That’s two weeks later than the tour was announced last year, and by then, we’d already had an idea of who would be playing.

At any rate, it looks like tickets will go on sale on April 17th.  Who will play? Slayer seems like an obvious choice to come back, with their album coming out. If you want to get ambitions, it’d be amazing to see a band like Iron Maiden or Tool play. When we spoke to co-founder John Reese last year, he said that Iron Maiden, Metallica, Rammstein and Guns N’ Roses were on his wish list. If any of them were to confirm, it’d definitely become a must-see festival, since all of them could headline their own tour if they’d wanted, and neither has glutted the market by playing Mayhem in the past. Who would you like to see play? Let us know in the comments section below.

[via theprp]