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Montreal hard-rock fans will have to live without Heavy Montreal in 2020.

Promoter Evenko announced Thursday that the annual hard-rock festival that takes place in the summer at Parc Jean-Drapeau will go on a one-year hiatus next year.

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“We’ve done it a couple of times, when we see there’s a ton of traffic coming through,” said Nick Farkas, Evenko’s senior vice-president of concert and events, in an interview Thursday afternoon from the Billy Bishop Airport in Toronto.

“We did it when there were a couple of big shows coming through in 2017,” Farkas said. “There’s no point in competing if we know there’s going to be a lot of stuff in the market. We literally looked at it and just said, ‘You know what? Let’s take a year off and basically come back strong in 2021.’ We’re doing upwards of 60 Heavy Presents shows in clubs, Bell Centre and Place Bell. Nothing was lining up (for the festival) and there was a lot of traffic. Sometimes the signs point to erring on the side of caution.”

None of these major hard-rock concerts for the summer of 2020 have been announced so far.

The last time Heavy Montreal was cancelled, in 2017, Evenko had two other huge hard-rock shows that summer at Parc Jean-Drapeau, one with Metallica and the other featuring Guns N’ Roses.

bkelly@postmedia.com

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