The long-running but troubled metal festival Metal Days in Slovenia has gone dark for 2024 and will not host another festival ever again under this name. Originally emerging in 2024 as Metal Camp, the festival was renamed Metal Days from 2013- 2022. After holding a truncated festival in 2023, citing catastrophic flooding canceling the last day, and blaming this years’ cancelation on fallout from the ill will of cheated fans, from the global pandemic, economic crisis, and business mistakes. They had promised to refund tickets for several past festivals, but in a lengthy farewell statement only available on their website, they blamed another company for withholding refunds. Metal Days also faced local competition from Tolminator, a smaller yet still successful festival in Tolmin, the original location of Metal Days until 2023. The statement also claimed that they “reinvested the profits from MetalDays into our other festivals: Winter Days of Metal, Headbanger’s Holiday, Bluesland, Overjam Reggae (2017-2019), and Punk Rock Holiday (2013-2016)” – all leading to losses weighing on the parent festival. The statement also states they tried to sell the festival in order to save it for fans to The statement includes details of the festival organizers’ attempts to sell the brand to major festival companies that included Live Nation, Superstruct, and Festival Republic, but failed. Further complicating things, Metal Days has wiped its socials except for YouTube, where they notoriously used to delete negative fan comments, which is a bad look considering the money owed fans, and gaslighting those fans about the whereabouts of that money. Thousands of bands played the festival, including past headliners for the event include: Amon Amarth, Anthrax, As I Lay Dying, At the Gates, Benediction, Beyond Creation, Cattle Decapitation, Clutch, Cradle of Filth, Messhuggah, and many more. At its best, it was a perfect combo of the great traditions of European-style open-air extreme metal music festivals, metalhead culture, camping, lakefront beach fun, and romping in the great outdoors in gorgeous Slovenia. We will keep tracking this story to see if fans ever get refunded, or if the promoters ever try to return. Read the full farewell statement below. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Metal Days
Clutch’s 2020 Festival Summer Continues Online!
Since Clutch is missing bringing their pure rock fury live to fans at summer music festivals worldwide, the band is turning their missed shows into a virtual festival online. Clutch has reached out to all promoters of their originally scheduled European festival dates and proposed to release playlists on their Spotify channel of the sets they were set to perform on the respective days. For all of their 25+ year career, the band have always changed the setlist of their live shows from one event to another. No performances were ever identical; setlists change nightly. Members of Clutch use an alphabetical, rotating system to determine the setlist for each show. Neil Fallon creates the setlist for the first show of each tour, followed by Jean-Paul Gaster, Dan Maines, and Tim Sult, then repeat, keeping the shows fresh for both the audience and the artist! The creation of these new Spotify playlists will rotate between the band members like normal, taking into account the intended allotted playing time at each festival date. Watch a message from the band:
The European Metal Festival Alliance to Host Streaming Events This Summer
A consortium of European Metal Festivals, hurt by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have banded together to do some good and to create a unique online event for both bands and fans! Continue reading