HATEBREED’s Jamey Jasta Taking Over 2025 ‘Summer Slaughter Tour’ With Global Expansion in Sight

Last year’s return of The Summer Slaughter Tour didn’t quite live up to expectations. After being dormant since 2019, founder Ash Avildsen brought the festival back, but with a lineup that leaned heavily on modern metal acts, straying from the tour’s tradition of mixing in veteran death metal bands.

Originally, Avildsen had plans to feature artists like Suicidal Tendencies, Biohazard, and Dying Fetus. However, the realities of booking a tour in 2024 — including budgeting and scheduling conflicts — forced a shift, resulting in Veil Of Maya and Brand Of Sacrifice co-headlining, along with Gideon, Left To Suffer, and others.

Fans didn’t take kindly to the change. After a heavy marketing push that leaned on nostalgia, the new lineup drew backlash. Matters escalated when The Summer Slaughter Tour’s Instagram fired back at MetalSucks’ critical article, calling detractors “pro vaccine mandate brainwashed pharma cuck sheep bootlickers.” The comment, widely believed to have been written by Avildsen, only deepened the controversy.

Avildsen later tried to smooth things over, telling The Punk Rock MBA that his goal was to highlight the next generation of headliners. He even promised refunds to fans dissatisfied with Veil Of Maya, Brand Of Sacrifice, or Gideon’s performances. Despite that confidence, the tour struggled, with low turnout and circulating photos of empty venues.

With that in mind, a new approach is underway. Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed has revealed he’s helping to take over The Summer Slaughter Tour. Speaking with Chris Garza of Suicide Silence on the ‘Garza Podcast’, Jasta said:

[Transcribed by ThePRP]

“I’m going to be helping take over ‘Summer Slaughter‘. I don’t think I can talk about the lineup, but this is something that I really wanted to do. Especially after the reaction to last year’s lineup…  Ash is a Maverick and a visionary. And if you look at the early days of ‘Summer Slaughter‘… There was shows where, like, Whitechapel opened, playing first, okay?

And [Avildsen] would always offer us this tour, and we never did it, because we were always building in Europe. But now that we kind of made it where we need to be in Europe, where either we’re headlining or we’re second or third from the top — we focused on Europe for a long time — I said we want to bring back… We want Hatebreed to headline a summer tour. And so after the the reaction [to ‘The Summer Slaughter Tour‘] from last year, I thought we could do this.

We can bring it back, and we can diversify the lineup a little bit, with some hardcore and some metalcore, but still have the deathcore and the death metal and the crossover, or whatever you want to call it.”

Looking back on some of the tour’s early lineups, Jasta added:

“So they created headliners out a lot of these bands, and Hatebreed hasn’t done a summer tour in years in the US. But we’re going to start small. It’s going to be very short, like 14-15 shows and we’re going to take small bands; we’re going to take the future bands, for better or for worse.

So we’re not expecting it to be blowout bonkers, but we’re just, we’re also taking it global… Because, it’s summer in other parts of the world, at different places, like Australia, like South America.

And we [Hatebreed] also need to be… We’re long overdue to start working Australia regularly. Again, we just did ‘Knotfest‘ and just crushed it, and in South America too. So yeah, so we got work to do, but it’s good problems to have and it’s good opportunities to have.

And yeah, I really, I appreciate Ash giving Tim [Borror of Sound Talent Group] and myself the support of not only ‘Milwaukee Metal Fest‘, but also the belief in us taking this over and trying to make something great again.”

For those unfamiliar, Jasta and Borror revived the long-dormant ‘Milwaukee Metal Fest’ in 2024 and have remained dedicated to reestablishing it as a premier heavy music festival in the Midwest.

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