Although it is not confirmed yet, there is a post on Instagram that ‘Mayhem Festival‘ could return in 2020. The Instagram post shows Rocky Balboa with Adrian in the famous movie Rocky from the 1970s that cast Sylvester Stallone as the all-time hero and comeback fighter. It seems Mayhem Festival is using this photo for a reason, especially teasing fans with the caption: “hindsight is 2020.. and so is the return of mayhem. 🧐”
Last April, Mayhem festival’s co-founders, John Reese hinted at a possible return of the festival that featured heavy metal and hard rock bands. He posted on his Facebook with the words, “Should it come back?” Reese stated the reason for the end of Mayhem Festival was, “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.” The last show for Mayhem Festival was in 2015 and the fest ended after only eight years of production.
Kevin Lyman, who is the other co-founder of the ‘Mayhem Festival,’ brought his long-running ‘Vans Warped Tour‘ to an end in 2018, transitioning to a series of 25th anniversary destination festivals earlier this year. Whether or not the ‘Mayhem Festival‘ does something similar remains to be seen.
At the 2015 Mayhem Festival, a young man ended up suing the city of Atlanta, LiveNation Entertainment and the Truth Initiative Foundation after being struck with a skateboard at the 2015 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. The young man, Joshua James Dugas was watching the band HellYeah perform at the Lakewood Ampitheater as part of the festival on July 29, 2015 when someone ran up and hit him on the head with a skateboard. Dugas’ friends helped him to a festival medical tent after the incident, where he collapsed and was taken to an emergency room via ambulance.
Kevin Lyman said of the Vans Warped tour, “Everyone looked at me like ‘He stopped ‘Warped Tour” and in our business we always look at it as money. First thing they go to: money. ‘He’s not making any money.’ And that was not it. That was not it. ‘Warped Tour‘ was not feeding my soul and my heart as much as you put in. Because ‘Warped Tour‘ was 90% about the community and 10% about the money, it really was. And some people I’m sure will say bullshit, but it’s true. I built that because I wanted to keep people coming to see live music. I wanted to build a community… And I’d lost that, that spirit was taken out of me for multiple reasons.”
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