70000 TONS OF METAL have set their public on-sale for Monday, September 7 at 12:00 p.m. EDT — 18:00 CET — through 70000tons.com, and have revealed thirty of the sixty bands playing the 2027 edition.
The cruise sails January 14 to 18, 2027 aboard Royal Caribbean's Freedom Of The Seas, leaving Miami for Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic and back. Three thousand tickets exist. That number is the whole point of the event: sixty bands playing to a crowd smaller than most club tours, each band performing twice across the four days, with no way for anyone to hide from anyone else on a ship in open water.
The thirty announced so far: ABIGAIL WILLIAMS, ÆTHER REALM, ARCH ENEMY, AVALAND, BATTLELORE, BRAINSTORM, BRYMIR, DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER, ENFORCER, EQUILIBRIUM, EVERGREY, EXMORTUS, EXODUS, FAMOUS STRANGERS, HAMMERFALL, MELECHESH, MOONSPELL, MORS PRINCIPIUM EST, NAGLFAR, OBSCURA, ORIGIN, PRIMAL FEAR, RHAPSODY, SINISTER, THULCANDRA, WARBRINGER, WOLFHEART and YE BANISHED PRIVATEERS, plus solo sets from Uli Jon Roth and Talia Hoit.
It is a characteristically wide spread. EXODUS and WARBRINGER cover Bay Area thrash across two generations; ORIGIN, OBSCURA and SINISTER handle the technical and old-school death metal end; NAGLFAR and THULCANDRA bring Swedish and German black metal; HAMMERFALL, PRIMAL FEAR, RHAPSODY and EVERGREY hold down power and progressive metal; MELECHESH and BATTLELORE take the folk and Mesopotamian flanks. Uli Jon Roth is the historical footnote made flesh — the guitarist who replaced Michael Schenker in SCORPIONS in 1973 and played on four albums, from "Fly To The Rainbow" through "Taken By Force".
WOLFHEART are treating the sailing as an event within an event. The Finnish melodic death metal band will give the world live premiere of their forthcoming album on board, with footage from the performance going into an upcoming music video.
"It is an absolute honor to step on the deck of the mighty 70000 Tons Of Metal for the third time, on one of the most majestic metal events in this universe," frontman Tuomas Saukkonen said.
Thirty more bands are still to be named. For anyone weighing it up, the arithmetic has not changed since the first sailing in 2011: the cabin price covers the room, the food and every band on board, and the tickets have a long history of disappearing faster than anyone plans for.