Thy Art Is Murder frontman Chris “CJ” McMahon chatted with Metal Injection and addressed this years ‘Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival‘. This years lineup has been struggling with controversial comments from headliners and organizers, downgraded venues and in a few instances, canceled shows. While happy with the turnout for his own band, McMahon, felt that the headlining acts (Slayer, King Diamond, etc.) deserve better, stating:
“Apparently ‘Mayhem‘ this year is fully shot. All the catering is shot—they have a different catering every day and most of the days it’s shit. Attendance has been piss poor man, like, I you know, I’m just trying to spit the facts out… There is a lot of people walking out towards the end of the night. Ask anybody that’s been on this ‘Mayhem Tour‘, like obviously you’re going to interview other bands and they’re gonna be like ‘yeah dude it’s really cool, there’s so many…’ There’s shit tons of people here for bands like me and stuff. But for these massive bands man, there’s not enough people for them and it’s sad to see.”
- Advertisement -“We come from Australia so when we heard we’re going to play with King Diamond and Slayer I’m like dude ‘this is going to be psycho.’ Like look at these venues man, if you stay here till the end of the night I don’t think there’d be enough people here to fill the seats.”
“It’s upsetting to see such iconic bands that have been around for 30-40 years and they’ve done what we’ve done and harder and then, these guys are at the top… These guys, respectfully, they should be having like 15-20,000 people a show. These bands are like the reason why there’s bands like me and some of these other metal bands, why we exist. If it wasn’t for Slayer and bands like this, they wouldn’t have inspired the bands that inspired us.
You know, they’re not getting the crowds and respect they deserve. I feel like there should be ten times more people here, cause this is like, these guys are the best at what they do, you know? And this is their home country and I know that Americans especially and Europeans are spoiled by tours, especially festival tours.
We’re competing with ‘Vans Warped Tour‘ at the moment which is a slightly different style of music, but you know, there’s a lot going on. And I think that with the economy and stuff, especially with young people, they can either do one thing out of those six tours they want to see. So maybe they’re just choosing other tours, but from the people that have worked on this ‘Mayhem‘ festival for the last few years and all the Rockstar guys say the same thing, this is like a really bad ‘Mayhem‘.”
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