It’s the end of an era. The organizers of the annual Vans Warped Tour announced that 2018 will be the final year for country-wide trek. Unfortunately, this comes just shy of the tour’s twenty-fifth anniversary, making the finale an even more emotional affair.
According to Billboard, festival founder Kevin Lyman is ending the tour due to “an evolving summer festival industry, a shrinking pool of bands, and declining ticket sales amongst its teenage demographic.” It also seems that he needs a break:
“Before Warped I was on three years of Lollapalooza, so [it’s been] 26 straight summers out on the road. Not that I’m completely going anywhere, but traveling around the country with a tour this size in the landscape that we’re in is…to be honest, I’m just tired.”
Warped Tour has a long standing legacy of hosting a mixture of punk, emo, and metal bands on its bills throughout the years, with 2017 being the most metal tour to date with bands including GWAR,Municipal Waste, Hatebreed, Candiria, The Acacia Strain, CKY, Valient Thorr, After the Burial, Carnifex, and Alestorm.
According to MetalSucks, sources involved with Warped Tour indicated that this year’s attendance was low.
Lyman says he wants to “see a big mix of bands I felt really embraced the Warped Tour lifestyle” for the final one. Which bands are those we can only guess until the final lineup is announced next year, presumably in the spring. You can read Lyman’s interview with Billboard here.
