Benediction will play 70000 Tons Of Metal in January, on a sailing that leaves Miami on the 14th, reaches Puerto Plata and comes back by the 18th.
The ship is Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas, and the format has not changed in years: performances around the clock, every band obliged to do a meet and greet, and nowhere for anybody to go. That last part is why musicians keep saying yes to it.
A death metal band from Birmingham who have been working since 1989 is the sort of booking this festival exists for. Benediction belong to the first wave of British death metal, next to Bolt Thrower and Napalm Death, and their audience is spread thin enough across continents that a boat is a sensible way to gather it.
Half the line-up has been announced, which leaves room for the arguments the festival encourages every year about who should be invited back.
Four nights at sea is also a longer set of obligations than a festival slot. Bands eat in the same rooms as the audience for the whole crossing, and the ones who dislike that tend not to return.
They put out Ravage of Empires before this.