WHO WILL BE ON OZZFEST THIS YEAR? NO ONE.
When the excellent line-up for this year’s Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival was announced last month, we wondered: who would be left for Ozzfest? It’s not like there’s ever gonna be a shortage of excellent bands to play the tour, but in terms of “namier” acts that were actually going to be touring, it seemed as though most of them had made other plans.
Well, now we have an answer: there isn’t gonna be an Ozzfest in ’09.
Blabbermouth reports:
Ozzy Osbourne is currently in the studio in Los Angeles co-producing his tenth studio album with Kevin Churko. The new CD is the rock and roll legend’s follow-up to 2007’s “Black Rain” which debuted in the Top Ten on the album charts in 11 countries and spawned Ozzy‘s first-ever #1 Active Rock track “I Don’t Wanna Stop” (which also sat atop the Heritage Rock chart for more than 20 weeks). The two-time Grammy Award winner has decided that he will not be touring until he has a new album in stores (currently projected to be Thanksgiving 2009). Thus, Ozzy has decided to put his namesake festival Ozzfest on hold this year.
Three quick thoughts, two related to Ozzfest, one not:
- Kevin Churko again? Is Ozzy actively trying to make bad records now?
- This is bullshit spin. Ozzy being in the studio has nothing to do with canceling Ozzfest; Ozzfest got canceled, I suspect, because it hasn’t done as well in recent years, there are too many competing festival tours, and we’re in an economic nose dive.
- Precisely because of those competing tours, it really doesn’t matter that there’s not gonna be an Ozzfest. Unless you love Ozzfest for the sake of tradition, Mayhem (and, on a smaller scale, Summer Slaughter) is practically the same exact thing, and should fill your need to spend an entire sweltering summer day watching an endless parade of metal bands. And that’s not even taking into the account the abundance of American metal fests that have sprung up as of late.
Time for you cats to weigh in…
-AR
