New hard rock/metal fest Las Rageous coming to downtown Las Vegas

Downtown Las Vegas is about to become “Bat Country,” at least for a couple of days this spring.

Las Rageous, a brand-new hard rock/metal festival, makes its high-decibel debut April 21 and 22, with a lineup including heavy hitters Avenged Sevenfold (the band behind the aforementioned Hunter S. Thompson-inspired hit), Godsmack, Breaking Benjamin, Anthrax, Killswitch Engage, Mastodon, Eagles of Death Metal, Vegas’ Escape The Fate and others.

Encompassing two square blocks downtown at Third Street and Carson Avenue, just south of the D Las Vegas, Las Rageous will feature two stages, a food truck village and a freakshow motif with wandering performers and installation pieces.

Las Rageous will run from 4 p.m. to midnight each day, with headliners going on at 10 p.m.

“Rock and metal have always done well in Vegas, yet there hasn’t necessarily been a brand or an avenue to present rock or metal in one big place,” says Kurt Melien, the president of Live Nation Las Vegas, which is putting on the fest. “We felt like it could easily be done if we just worked on it.”

And so he did.

For two years.

Melien’s efforts paid off after a meeting with the D Las Vegas owner Derek Stevens, who owns much of the real estate that Las Rageous will take place upon and agreed to partner with the new endeavor.

Las Rageous’ debut is a timely one: the hard rock/metal festival circuit has exploded in recent years, with numerous regional fests like Charlotte, North Carolina’s Carolina Rebellion, Jacksonville, Florida’s Welcome to Rockville, Wisconsin’s Rock Fest and Rock USA and numerous other events filling up the calendar beginning in the spring.

“We scheduled this particular weekend knowing that Welcome to Rockville was two weeks later and then Carolina Rebellion was the following weekend,” Melien says. “We absolutely took a nod from these regional festivals that were happening around the country in metal and thought that Vegas is even an better place to do this. We sort of said, ‘OK, on the West Coast, there really isn’t an event like this in the springtime or one in Vegas at all.’ ”

Melien wants to build Las Rageous into an annual destination festival, though he plans on doing so in stages, capping attendance at this year’s event at 10,000 per day.

“We’re keeping it at 10,000 on purpose,” he says. “The footprint is built for that. We didn’t want to make it any bigger this year, because we wanted to have this intimate, controlled environment. We think this thing’s going to sell out pretty quickly. And then the goal is to grow this into a likely three-day event and potentially take over additional real estate around the footprint.”

This being said, Melien expects Las Rageous to develop at a pace consistent with the speed of your average Anthrax tune.

“I think it’s going to grow fast,” he says. “I think this thing has really good potential to grow into a big event.”

Two-day presale tickets are $99 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Thursday at www.lasrageous.com. Single-day tickets will be not offered.

Read more from Jason Bracelin at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.