It’s anyone’s guess whether music festivals will actually be able to happen by this fall, but at least a few promoters are going ahead and announcing them anyway. Birmingham, Alabama’s Furnace Fest is one of them. Furnace Fest was a big deal in the early ’00s — a festival dedicated to hardcore, punk, metal, and associated subgenres. The fest emphasized Christian bands, but it also booked a whole lot of secular groups. Last year, after a 17-year hiatus, Furnace Fest announced that it was coming back with a lineup that was full of the bands that might’ve been booked 17 years ago. The pandemic prevented that festival from happening, but they’re apparently trying again this year.

This year’s Furnace Fest is now scheduled to go down 9/24-26 at Birmingham’s Sloss Furnaces, a giant outdoor industrial museum. The three headliners are all blasts from the past: Long Island emo stars Taking Back Sunday, Massachusetts metalcore big dogs Killswitch Engage, and Underøath, the massively popular Christian metalcore band. If you’ve got love in your heart for hardcore and/or metalcore, there’s a whole lot to like in the supporting lineup.

The list of bands booked to play Furnace Fest is pretty crazy, and it includes Touché Amoré, Turnstile, Converge, Knocked Loose, Andrew W.K., Thursday, Hatebreed, the Get Up Kids, Counterparts, Cave In, Mineral, Hot Water Music, Every Time I Die, Piebald, SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Shai Hulud, Face To Face, the Appleseed Cast, Defeater, Stretch Arm Strong, Astronoid, Zao, Darkest Hour, and Comeback Kid, among many others. The whole thing looks fun as fuck! If it happens!

On the Furnace Fest website, the organizer say that they will “observe all local & national large gathering guidelines for both the audience and the artists.” You can find out all the relevant info here.