We had a great time at Heavy Montreal this past summer and were looking forward to heading back in 2017, but it was announced on Wednesday that the hard-rock festival will go on hiatus next summer. Heavy Montreal will not return until July 28 and 29, 2018 at Parc Jean-Drapeau.<\/p>\n
Nick Farkas, vice-president of concerts and events at Evenko, said Heavy Montr\u00e9al was being cancelled in 2017 due to a number of factors, including the renovations that will be going on at Parc Jean-Drapeau and the fact that the summer of 2017 will have a busy schedule for other hard-rock and metal shows in Montreal.<\/p>\n
The announcement came two days after Evenko revealed that hard-rock superstars Guns N\u2019 Roses will perform at Parc Jean-Drapeau on Aug. 19, just a couple of weeks after the time frame when Heavy Montr\u00e9al has typically taken place. The site for the Guns N\u2019 Roses show has a capacity of 45,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that we\u2019re moving to a temporary site next year for Osheaga and \u00celeSoniq (and for Heavy Montr\u00e9al, if it was to happen), that weighed on us,\u201d Farkas told the Montreal Gazette. \u201cThis year, we thought we really hit on a really cool site and we want to be able to make sure that we can replicate something good going into 2018. And there\u2019s a ton of traffic (in the summer of 2017) in terms of metal and hard-rock stuff. We just thought, all signs point to taking a year off.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did it before. We took off 2009 when there was a lot of traffic, and came back stronger than ever in 2010. \u2026 It\u2019s just a year off. It\u2019s a hiatus. Guns N\u2019 Roses is a huge deal, and there\u2019s other stuff that we\u2019re going to be announcing soon. The Heavy brand isn\u2019t going anywhere. We\u2019ll be doing Heavy-presented events this summer, and last year was a great year. So we\u2019re excited for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heavy Montr\u00e9al was reduced from three to two days this year and was moved to a smaller site on \u00cele Ste-H\u00e9l\u00e8ne. Evenko will also be holding Heavy in the City on July 27, 2018, with shows at various venues around town.<\/p>\n