Epicenter Announces Full 2020 Lineup

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Deftones, Godsmack, Volbeat, Staind, Papa Roach and David Lee Roth join Metallica on the lineup for Epicenter May 1-3 at Rock City Campgrounds at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C. 

The big news with Danny Wimmer Presents five major rock festivals next year will be Metallica headlining each event twice, with a unique setlist each night. The thrash-masters headline Epicenter Friday May 1, and Sunday May 3. 

“Metallica isn’t just another headliner. When Metallica takes the stage, it’s an event. It’s an experience. That’s the same standard we’ve set for every DWP festival – from the first band to the last band, and everything that happens in between. I can’t wait to bring the biggest band in the world to the biggest rock festivals in America,” Danny Wimmer, founder of Danny Wimmer Presents said in a statement. “Metallica paved this road that we travel. How many artists on the bill at these five festivals first picked up an instrument, or first started a band, because of Metallica?”

Single and full-weekend  tickets and camping passes are on sale now. 

Additional acts on the bill include Gojira, Chevelle, Cypress Hill, Rancid, Royal Blood, Anthrax, Dropkick Murphys, I Prevail, and Alter Bridge.

Pollstar recently featured Metallica on its cover, making the case for the metal megastars as being perhaps the biggest band in the world. For the story, drummer Lars Ulrich explained the band’s recent touring schedule: “The touring environment is just so much healthier than it was. Also, obviously the festival experience now means that you can rotate between playing indoor, arena level shows and then you can play sort of stadium shows and then you can play festivals. So we quite comfortably rotate between those three different experiences. And for the audience, the fans in those particular cities get a chance to see us in different size buildings and also at festivals.”

While Metallica is doing all of DWP’s major rock festivals this year, there are other DWP events to find headliners for, such as Bourbon & Beyond, which attracted 91,000 fans to the Highland Festival Grounds KY Expo Center in Louisville Sept. 20-22, a third-year event topped by Foo Fights, Robert Plant , Zac Brown Band and many others, billed as the biggest bourbon festival in the world.

Metallica played at Rock On The Range – DWP’s previous Columbus, Ohio, collaboration with AEG Presents – in 2017. After the partnership between the promoters on the “World’s Loudest Month” concert series ended in 2018, AEG sued DWP for allegedly withdrawing from their partnerships on Rock On The Range and Carolina Rebellion, claiming Wimmer refused to be bought out or to buy out AEG’s shares in the events, and then created competing events.

“We were trying to make 2019 happen with them,” DWP CEO Danny Hayes told Pollstar in response to the suit. “We hit that point of no return where you have to lock in venues and make offers to bands or there’s going to be no festival. The bands were saying, ‘Guys, if you don’t make offers soon, we’re going to have to go somewhere else.’ So we went to AEG and said, ‘What do you want to do?’ … Are we making offers on behalf of DWP or are we making them on behalf of DWP and AEG?’ At that moment we couldn’t make a deal, so I said ‘that’s too bad.’”