Metallica Likely to Headline Multiple North American Festivals

Well, it would appear that the mystery of Metallica’s new countdown clock has been solved. Rather than counting down to something pertaining to the twentieth anniversary of S&M and this year’s pair of S&M² performances, it is likely leading to an announcement that the band will be headlining multiple major North American festivals in 2020.

The giveaway? The official websites of multiple festivals produced by Danny Wimmer Presents — specifically, the Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival, Louder Than Life, Aftershock, and Welcome to Rockville — have been “hacked” (but not really — it’s clearly just a dramatic PR flourish). Now, instead of including festival information, each site plays a creepy video in which the “hackers” threaten to “leak your server credentials” unless they “get what we want” by noon PDT this Thursday, October 10. Which, oh hey wouldn’t ya know it, is when the Metallica countdown clock will finish, y’know, counting down. (In yesterday’s article I said the clock would finish counting down around 8 a.m. EDT. Oops. Do not attempt math before you’ve had your morning coffee, kids.)

And in case that alone wasn’t enough evidence to convince you that Metallica are headlining those events, The PRP also notes that “Some enterprising individuals did some digging around on [MetallicaXX.com] and found unpublished portions had ties to Danny Wimmer Presents.”

So, we’ll know for sure on Thursday, but I mean, c’mon. This is clearly happening.