Fans are speculating that Metallica’s mysterious upcoming “XX” announcement could refer to a series of festival appearances during 2020.

The band unveiled the MetallicaXX website yesterday. It features a clock that will reach zero on Thursday, when, presumably, the announcement will be revealed.

Following the site’s launch, fans on Reddit explored the site’s code and found connections to the Danny Wimmer Presents organization, which presents festivals including Louder Than Life, Aftershock and Sonic Temple. The sites associated with those events linked to the new Metallica site.

Each festival tweeted a fictional post saying, “The page you are trying to access is no longer under admin control. We've waited long enough. We've taken matters into our own hands. We will get what we want. It's simple. You have until 10/10 12PT to give us what we want or we leak server access credentials.”

That date matches the Metallica zero hour, and the attached video appears to resemble the visual feel of the XX site. You can see it below.

Metallica experimented with holding its own festivals with the Orion Music + More events in 2012 and 2013, but they were reported to be financial failures, with frontman James Hetfield admitting they’d “lost millions” in the process before shutting down the project.

Three years later, drummer Lars Ulrich expressed hopes that they could return to the festival circuit in some way. “We talked about … something that was a little smaller,” he said (via Blabbermouth). “Like a boutique, where it's more full-on Metallica. Maybe it's just Metallica and some stuff, like museum stuff, and just maybe making it only Metallica for a whole weekend, but making it smaller. We haven't really dialed it yet, but we're looking at all the different options.”

 

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