One of the biggest topics of conversation this summer around the proverbial heavy metal water cooler was Mayhem Festival founder Kevin Lyman blaming the poor attendance at this year's incarnation of the traveling tour on metal being "gray, bald and fat." Those comments resulted in a huge backlash from the metal community including the Slayer guitarist and tour headliner Kerry King calling Lyman a douche. It was not good and attendance was so poor and the brand was so tarnished by the bad press that by all accounts this year saw the final Mayhem tour. But, it seems like this year's tour was doomed from the start and almost didn't happen.
In a recent interview with VH1, Tom Araya claims there were problems even before any of the bands hopped on the bus and said things were actually worse than Kerry King made it seem like in the press:
"The guy [Kevin Lyman] was an idiot. You know, you want to self-promote, you don't want to put an end to your career. So I was upset. I couldn't believe he said what he said.
"By all accounts, I wasn't really happy with how they handled the the negotiating process to the festival."
""In all honesty, when they first came to us and approached us with the festival and who they had as a lineup, we said no. Then they came back to us and said, 'Well how about this, and this is what we'll do.' And we're like, 'Okay, that's cool. That sounds reasonable.' So it wasn't us going, 'We want to headline your festival!' 'You guys suck.' First we said no, and then they came back to us. And, I'll use this phrase loosely, they came back to us with a better offer. We thought everything was great, and then before the tour started, they were unsure about how things were going with ticket sales, and this and that, And we're, like, 'Hey, we can pull the plug. We don't have an issue with that.' So, it moved forward, and then they started making adjustments to the stage, to the lights, to sound, to venues. They made a bunch of arrangements and changes. And that was on them. We never said anything other than, 'Okay, if you need to do that, that's fine.' So Kerry had a lot on his mind, and he said a lot less than he could have. It sounded more like he was whining and griping about stuff."
So if Mayhem rolls back around, I'm guessing either Lyman and Reese are really going to have to stack the bill to wash the stench of this year's incarnation. Speaking of if Mayhem rolls back around, the two promoters were asked in an interview with AltPress about the possibility of another go at it and it's hard to guage their feelings:
“Lyman: Maybe. I don’t know. You never say never right?
Reese: Man, we’re just out of the firing line with this. We haven’t really had a debrief on anything as far as what we want to do, where we want to take it, if we want to take it… The biggest problem heavy music has right now is headliners, ultimately. You can’t play amphitheaters with this massive production without bands that are hard ticket sellers.
There was all this B.S. about it being a shitty lineup this year – but trust me, we beat the streets for a lineup. We didn’t leave a single stone unturned. We’re going to let dead dogs lie. [Laughs]. We’ll see what happens in the future. Who knows what the future holds?”
With the dismal outcome of this year's tour and the general unhappiness of all the bands on it, perhaps going away for at least a year might be a good idea. But you know if next summer rolls around and there are some viable headlining acts available, they'll rebuild the brand in a heartbeat.
