Are Slayer and Gojira Touring the U.S. Together This Fall?

A press release arrived at the MS Mansion this morning via carrier pigeon announcing the lineup for this year’s Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX, November 8-10. The festival’s organizers have put together a stellar lineup across all genres of music as usual, and the metal contingent is particularly strong with more bands to be announced in August and September. The PRP has put together a list of all the metal bands announced so far (here) and you can check the full lineup at the official FFFF site.

But this much caught my eye: Slayer and Gojira together on the same bill. It’s certainly not unheard of for festival promoters to spring on flights to bring in bands, but flying Gojira in from France would likely cost well over $5k, not to mention hotels, local transport, etc… and Gojira aren’t exactly at the level where they’d be worth it from a festival’s perspective to spend a bunch of money on (Metallica, on the other hand, get this kind of treatment regularly). By November it will have been 10 months since Gojira’s last U.S. tour, so it’s not a stretch at all to conjecture that Gojira would be looking at a fall U.S. tour, and in a support role to boot since their last run was a headliner.

Festivals often book existing touring packages, and looking at the festival lineup as announced so far Slayer are really the only band that make sense as a touring partner for Gojira. A Slayer, Gojira and Quicksand touring package would be fucking aces, but it seems unlikely. Pelican would also be a great choice to open, although it’s a stretch. So for now I’m gonna guess that Slayer and Gojira will be touring together this fall with some third band that hasn’t been announced yet.

I don’t know that I’m really interested in seeing Slayer (again) — or, I should say, half of Slayer… or Slexoder — but I’d go see that tour just for Gojira. Plus a potentially awesome third band. Let’s see what happens!