Late last night, festival promoter Danny Wimmer teased the news that Mudvayne would be announcing their reunion today, April 19th at noon eastern. Noon came and went and… nothing. But about an hour later, it was official – Mudvayne is back.
The band will be playing four festivals this year for Danny Wimmer Presents, kicking off with Inkcarceration in September and wrapping with Welcome to Rockville in November.
The band posted the following on their social media:
These symptoms suggested that our evolution, I suppose, from the animal kingdom into human kingdom itself was catalyzed or triggered by our encounter with these hallucinogenics, and… Yes, we are an ape with a symbiotic relationship to a mushroom, and that has given us self reflection, language, religion, and all the spectrum of effects that flow from these things And one can only wonder how these hallucinogens might effect our future evolution as well They have brought us to this point and as we make our relationship to them conscious, we may be able to take control of our future evolutionary path
MudDvAyNe 2021
Inkcarceration
September 10 – 12
Aftershock
October 7 – 10
Louder Than Life
September 23 – 26
Welcome To Rockville
November 11 – 14
They also included this video as part of the teaser:
Promoter Danny Wimmer who is staging the concerts noted in a statement that Mudvayne were one of the most requested bands to see on his fests: “In our fan surveys, Mudvayne has consistently been one of the most requested bands – even though they weren’t an active band! We’ve been working for years to make this happen, so when I got the call that they’d finally take a meeting, [DWP Executive VP & Talent Buyer] Gary Spivack and I jumped at the chance to fly to Vegas. We sat down for dinner with Mudvayne, their lawyer Eric German, manager Diony Sepulveda and agent Ryan Harlacher – the band hadn’t even been in the same room together for 10 years – and pleaded our case for why the time was right for this to happen. We were hoping to announce this in 2020, we’re fortunate enough to be able to do it in 2021, and DWP is super pumped to have Mudvayne exclusively at all four of our festivals this year.”
In summer 2019, vocalist Chad Gray was asked about the possibility of a reunion by 101.1 WRIF's Meltdown and at the time said that his current band, HELLYEAH, was the priority. "We're all good. We all talk. We're cool. Whatever. It just is what it is, man. This is where I have to be right now. This is so monumentally important to not only me personally, but to us as a band and I think to us as a metal community, a metal family, just to carry this on and fucking run it till the fucking wheels fall off. I'm in. I'll do it for as long as I can do it. I love my guys; I love my band; I love our fans. They're not even fans — they're family. And it's worldwide. And it's a fucking beautiful thing."
Bassist Ryan Martinie seemed more optimistic last July, telling MetalSucks "Man, there's always talk [about us coming back]. Which is a good thing. I'm fortunate enough that the thing that we made together still garners some kind of interest from our fans and for those people who may have wanted to see us and never got to. There's still kind of the, 'Man, are they gonna do it?'
"I don't have any answers for you on that front. Only that it's fun when Mudvayne still is something that people enjoy… But as far as it being a future item… I don't know. Only time can tell."
This year, 2020 marked the 20th anniversary of L.D. 50. We'll keep you posted with more updates tomorrow.
