Metal Open Air

The tradition & historical record

Metal Open Air (also known simply as MOA) was an unsuccessful 2012 heavy metal festival. It took place between 20–22 April, at the Parque Independência, 25 km southeast from downtown São Luís, Maranhão, northeastern Brazil. Due to problems with the payment of artists and the accommodation and security of the audience, the festival was ultimately cancelled on its last day. ¹

Originally, it was supposed to be a Brazilian version of the famous German Wacken Open Air. However, the promoters failed to obtain official permission to use the name, so they decided to switch it for Metal Open Air. From that moment on, several bands, including Shaman, Megadeth, Symphony X and Anthrax, started to confirm their performances, though a few had cancelled, including Shadowside, Krisiun, and Volbeat, mostly for logistical reasons. By February/March 2012, the official announced line-up was as follows (act names in bold are headliners; El Diablo is an entertainment group that prepared rock night parties after every headliner performance): ¹

The headliners of the second day, the Rock and Roll All Stars, were a supergroup composed of Gene Simmons, Joe Elliott, Matt Sorum, Duff McKagan, Gilby Clarke, Glenn Hughes, Ed Roland, Sebastian Bach, Steve Stevens, Mike Inez, Billy Duffy and Charlie Sheen, who was to be the festival's master of ceremonies. ¹

Shortly before and even during the festival, several bands cancelled their performances. British thrash band Venom, for example, had their visas sent to Africa instead of Brazil by mistake, thus making it impossible for them to take part of MOA and two other South American festivals. Hansi Kürsch, vocalist for German power metal quartet Blind Guardian, stated: ¹

In 25 years of our career we have been extremely successful in the avoidance of cancelled shows, so far. This unfortunately comes to a very sad end here in São Luís. Due to massive technical and administrative problems we were forced to cancel tonight's show. As far as we understand it seems to be the local management who has not been able to secure a proper festival environment, anymore. Things are pretty out of hand there. We feel very sorry about this totally unsatisfying situation, but the mistakes made by the local promoter makes an even improvised show impossible. In the future we will be more careful in confirming such festivals. Aquiles Priester, from Hangar, also cancelled his band's participation, stating: ¹

We negotiated everything via oral conversation, but we made ourselves very much clear that we needed the total cash before our performance, since we needed to pay our trip to São Luís in our very own bus. We wouldn't accept, by any means, to play without our backline. ¹

Soon after MOA was cancelled, both companies responsible for the festival (Negri Concerts and Lamparina Filmes e Produções) accused each other of breaking contractual rules. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Metal Open Air”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Metal Open Air is heavy metal festival in Brazil, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²