The popular rock band, Metallica announced on Tuesday that they are taking on more than 20 bands for the inaugural of the upcoming rock fest, Orion Music + More festival on June 23 and 24. The veteran rock band will perform on both the nights of the rock fest on two of their classic albums: ''Ride the Lightning'' of 1884 and ''Metallica'' that came out in 1991.

Sources say that this is the only time the popular head bangers would perform this year in North America. Metallica drummer, Lars Ulrich is very happy and excited about the upcoming rock fest. He stated in an interview that the band always wanted to do its own rock fest with a variety of music and games and thankfully this year, they got this opportunity.

This rock fest will also feature popular metal band: Liturgy, a Brooklyn-based trio. Liturgy's Aesthetica was one of the most highly acclaimed metal albums of last year. Other notable bands include Roky Erikson, the Black Angels, Artic Monkeys, Titus Andronicus, Modest Mouse and many more.

Metallica fan club members can buy tickets on Wednesday and the general public can buy tickets on Saturday. C3 Presents is producing the Orion Festival.

This year, I won't be able to make it to my music festivals due to our baby's imminent arrival. My wife knows how much these festivals mean to me so, to compensate, she offered that we turn the spare room downstairs into a music room. She's a huge music lover, too, so we were both thrilled to undertake such a project! We started by putting in some good Empire carpet, for the acoustics. Then I painted the walls and she put up some great, enlarged concert photos and music posters. We got ourselves a nice sound system, along with some good headphones, which we agreed we can use whenever one of us really needs a brief time-out from being new parents! Back at Empire Today, when we were looking through the carpeting selection, my wife noticed some tile samples. She fell in love with one of the patterns and said she'd really love those tiles for the kitchen. I agreed, especially since she had been so thoughtful about the music room. To us, music is not only enjoyment, it's regenerative. It helps to clear our minds, renew our perspective, and inspire our hearts. I'm so glad we have a space in our home now dedicated to it…and an unexpectedly improved kitchen to boot!

Music festivals across the US, such as the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and the Sasquatch!, sold out in a matter of days. This is in spite of the fact that the concert industry overall had a bad year in 2010. Unlike music tours and concerts, music festivals are thriving.

The difference is probably due to the fact that festivals create a more eclectic experience and offer a variety of bands. Festivals like Stagecoach, Rock on the Range, and Lollapalooza set attendance records last year, while high-profile tours like the Jonas Brothers and American Idols Live struggled with slow sales, cancellations and postponements. The founder of the Bamboozle festival compared themselves to Walmart and Costco of the music world, in that they provide such a wide variety of entertainment at a value price.