Aaron Grech July 7th, 2020 – 8:54 PMThe Maximum Rock Festival at the Roman Arenas in Bucharest, Romania has announced its 2021 lineup featuring the likes of progressive metal artist Devin Townsend, symphonic metal outfit Epica and Swedish metal outfit Katatonia. All of the artists on its lineup were originally scheduled for this year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tickets for the event can be purchased here, while the event will take place from June 4 to 5, 2021.
Other prominent groups who will be performing include Therion, Orphaned Land, Riot Monk, Loch Vostok, Subterranean Masquerade and Magnetic. Two-day ticket holders for the postponed festival can either choose to attend next year or the 2022 event if they cannot make the prior edition.
Townsend has been hard at work during the quarantine, releasing two separate hour long ambient guitar pieces last month, which were intended to be background listening. “This stuff is meant to simply be background sounds while you do other things,” Townsend explained.
He has also been busy outside of this release. The past few months saw the deluxe release of his 2019 album Empath, which followed the announcement that he was working on a new studio album. His Quarantine series saw the release of a podcast, previously unreleased music videos, new mixes, covers and several new songs including, “Heavy Factions,” “Stampy’s Blaster,” “Good Morning!” and “Quarantine.”
Katatonia recently held a live stream event at the Studio Gröndahl in Stockholm, where they invited producer David Castillo, who producer their album Night Is The New Day, to handle its mix. The group is still releasing music, their most recent album City of Burials came out this year.
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat