Gods Of Metal Back To Milan

After two years on the Made In Bo site at Bologna’s Parco Nord, Andrea Pieroni is moving his much-traveled Gods Of Metal Festival back to Milan.

“I’ve always wanted to do it in Milan because that’s where it was born, but the sites I’ve used there in the past are football grounds and that causes problems including fitting in between the matches,” he said.

“Milan is the best market and has an international airport, which is very important because we’re selling around 30 percent of the tickets outside of Italy.”

The event began at Milan Forum in 1996 and stayed there for four years. In 2001, it moved to a soccer field at Monza, but moved back to Milan’s Brianteo Stadium a year later.

After two years of struggling to slot into the soccer fixture list, Pieroni took the event to Parco Nord but now he has Milan’s 25,000-cap Idropark – a greenfield site in the city centre – and Gods Of Metal has its fifth home in 10 years.

He said the 10th anniversary event will be “massive” and he’s expanding it from three to four days (June 1-4) to accommodate the crowds that will want to see Guns N’ Roses’ first appearance in Italy since ’96. The bill includes Korn, Deftones, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, Alice In Chains, Venom, Opeth, Stratovarius, and Gamma Ray.

–John Gammon