Summer Slaughter’s No Longer the “Most Extreme Tour” After Organizers Change Tagline

In what looks like a bit of a rebranding, the organizers behind this year’s Summer Slaughter tour have axed the long running claim of being “the most extreme tour of the year” from their new promotional material. In the last hour, a new tour poster was uploaded to the festival’s official Instagram page with the new tagline “the all day rager is finally back!!!”

This comes a little over a week after initial reactions to the tour’s lineup were lukewarm, if we’re being kind about the whole thing. You may recall that we criticized the tour when the announcement came down because it just didn’t match up with past years and fan expectations of what a Summer Slaughter tour should be. In fact, a lot of the comments we saw reflected that very concern, mentioning how the old Summer Slaughter used to be extreme death metal bands from front to back most years.

For example, previous iterations featured sets from bands like Morbid Angel, Dying Fetus, Goatwhore, and Cattle Decapitation, this year’s traveling festival has Veil of Maya and Brand of Sacrifice co-headlining most (but not all) of the dates, with Gideon, Left To Suffer, Ten56, Tallah, Cabal, and Brat filling out the rest of the bill. (And again, this isn’t to say anything bad about the bands on this year’s bill.)

After having that pointed out, organizers lost their shit online, calling us out specifically for everything from being owned by a publicly traded company to being pro-vaccine. That last bit was an especially weird flex, considering it’s 2024 and we’re already a couple years removed from COVID mandates and vaccine debates… You go off, king.

Honestly, all of the hubbub and self-immolation via social media comments could have been avoided if the organizers behind this festival had just taken this angle from the get go. Instead, they hyped up this year’s festival by sharing old tour posters featuring those more extreme death metal lineups and basically saying “Remember this crazy tour, guys? Who’s ready to find out who’s playing the first Summer Slaughter in several years?!” They got fans expecting one thing and delivered on something that didn’t quite match up to those expectations, of course things were going to go sideways on the internet.

At least now the claim of being the “most extreme tour of the year” no longer exists because frankly, it’s no longer true.