Tennessee Metal Devastation Music Festival fighting to book venue in Lexington

(JACKSON, TENN)-

Heavy metal fans may not be able to attend a music festival in Lexington.

The Tennessee Metal Devastation Music Festival wants to book the Beech Lake stage in Lexington for an upcoming event, but it hasn’t been easy.

“I spent weeks calling TVA people all over the state calling, trying to figure out what was, what was going on and who I needed to speak with," said organizer Raven Mounla.

But Mounla hasn’t had much luck booking this heavy metal festival and she believes the reason may be discrimination after last year's inaugural festival.

“As word got out about the genre of music being heavy metal, there was a small group of people in the town who really made a big stink and it created like a mini satanic panic, which got us a lot of attention," Mounla said.

Mounla says she did her best to make everyone happy last year, “We agreed to shut the show down by 11 p.m., which we had originally signed with the lake that we could go to midnight. We also agreed to put a pg 13 rating on our show.”

The controversy didn’t stop over twelve-hundred people from attending last year's festival.

Mounla said, “We had people, teenagers from Lexington, coming up to us and telling us that this was the best thing that had ever come to their community, that they finally felt seen and like there was a place where they could come and feel like they belonged and they could be themselves.”

But when Mounla went to book the festival for this year, she found out that the booking rights are in limbo.

But before she gets the okay- the Henderson County Chamber of Commerce has to vote whether or not to assume the management responsibilities of the venue at Beech Lake.

Mounla finds the timing suspicious, "We don’t have proof that this is targeted at us, but it’s looking like it is.”

The chamber will vote on assuming managing rights at a meeting on January 18th.

39 news reached out to the Chamber, but no one wanted to comment until after the vote.

Mounla isn’t the only one who wants the festival to return to Lexington there's a petition going around with over 800 signatures to bring the festival back.

“We were getting a lot of calls from bands, all kinds of people wanting to know, are you having this festival again?,” Mounla said.

Mounla encourages everyone to sign the petition and let the Chamber know that they want the heavy metal show to go on at Beech Lake this year.