The 70000 Tons Of Metal festival organizers have announced that the twelfth edition of the floating festival will sail on January 29 to February 2, 2024 from Miami, Florida to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic and back, on board the luxury passenger vessel Freedom Of The Seas.

The festival will once again host 60 heavy metal bands spanning all subgenres and welcome 3000 metalheads from around the world.

Freedom Of The Seas, a Freedom-class cruise ship, offers a host of amenities and complimentary dining options. Guests will also enjoy unrestricted festival access to all 120-plus performances across four stages. The Royal Theater is a five-storied concert hall. The more intimate Star Lounge offers the local club vibe. A third indoor stage, Studio B, provides an arena-like atmosphere. Lastly, but most notable, the Pool Deck Stage: the world’s biggest open air stage structure to sail the open seas. This colossal stage is surrounded by bars, plenty of room to sunbathe and even hot tubs incorporated into the stage itself, offering guests the unique opportunity to watch their favorite metal bands from the comfort of a hot tub.

The ship will sail to Puerto Plata, the Dominican Republic’s oldest city in the north and the pioneer of tourism in the country. The city is famous for Parque Independencia, the “Central Park” of Puerto Plata and a popular meeting point. Take a cable car to the top of “Monte Isabel de Torres”, a peak rising 2,600 feet above sea level. Swim and snorkel at Sosua beach and then grab some lunch or a beverage at one of the many nearby restaurants and bars. Try some local fare with a bowl of la Bandera: a meat stew with rice, beans, and fried plantains or a saucy Pescado con coco (fish in coconut sauce).

La Casa de la Cultura is a three-story Victorian house that features local arts exhibits, a contemporary art gallery, library and store with local goods for sale. Find yourself some of the oldest, most translucent amber in the world, which Puerto Plata is famous for.

As the festival organizers continually strive to innovate and improve the heavy metal festival experience for their guests and their surroundings, festivalgoers will once again have the option to purchase a Carbon Offset when booking their private cabin or single ticket for 70000 Tons Of Metal 2024. For the eleventh voyage of 70000 Tons Of Metal in 2023, nearly 15% of their customers chose to purchase the additional Carbon Offset. The funds contributed through the Carbon Offset Program went to Greentripper‘s Improved Cookstoves in Ghana project.

70000 Tons Of Metal has been one of the more unique and/or ingenious ideas to infiltrate the live music scene in the last decade and a half.

“You have to see it took me from the point I had that quite insane idea,” 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise creator, Swiss concert promoter Andy Piller, told FixionMedia.com in a 2014 interview. “It took me almost four years to get the ship in the water, so to speak. It was from the beginning that my thought was to make the ship as an annual event, given the fact it would work. When you start a new business, you never know if it will work or not. Isn’t this what you’re aiming for? Otherwise I wouldn’t have put four years of my life into it. I wanted to establish it as an annual thing, and not spend four years of my life as a one-off.”

Piller‘s extensive background in the European live industry gave him an up-close and personal look at the workings of the venerable open-air festivals that dominate the summer landscape. Seeing how successful these festivals are, coupled with a few drinks and some friends during a warm summer night at his apartment in Vancouver, helped spawn the idea for 70000 Tons.

“I have never organized big festivals,” he noted. “I started as a local promoter in Europe, then switched to a touring role. Then I was working for a tour/production/road manager for 15 years, and that eventually brought me to Vancouver. It wasn’t something far off. It’s not like I’m a banker or dentist coming up with this. I totally had the idea and connections on how this could work, and I had been to most of the big European open-air festivals. That was the idea — just condense that and put it on a cruise ship.

“People thought I was nuts to have a metal fest on a cruise ship,” he continued. “They thought it was nuts to have put 40 bands on there, and now we have 60. The idea is like, the average band has five musicians, and if you have 40 bands, that’s 200 guests. It’s a 1-to-10 ratio, and that actually created such a special atmosphere because there are so many musicians around. I’m sure it would have worked with less bands, but the question is, where’s the breaking point? A lot of people are concerned we’re going to make it bigger and lose the intimacy factor and so on. I think it won’t, but just to keep the principles of the event the same, so okay, we add 1,000 people and we have to add 20 more bands. Now there are 3,000 guests and 60 bands.”

Visit 70000tons.com for more information and watch the 70000 Tons Of Metal social media pages for more announcements, including sales dates.