Soundwave Festival 2016 is just months away and punters are still waiting on a lineup announcement. As Tone Deaf reported yesterday, festival founder AJ Maddah recently gave fans the closest thing they’ve had to a concrete announce date.

With the festival set to kick off in less than 100 days, Maddah took to his beloved Twitter account to bemoan the stress and fatigue he’s been experiencing as he attempts to finalise the artwork for his flagship event.

“2am. Tired & super stressed about SW16 artwork a week out from announce & can’t get Chimfucking chimeny from Mary Poppins out of my head FML,” Maddah tweeted. The lineup, it seemed, was a mere week away from announcement.

Fans rejoiced, as the promoter’s tweet came after yet another false start. Punters were anticipating a lineup drop on 15th October, after the festival’s official Twitter account confirmed the date to triple j’s Linda Marigliano.

However, Maddah soon clarified the 15th was “not our date but pretty close” and the controversial date may have been ‘leaked’ “just to spite a certain website”. Maddah said simply that the lineup was “days rather than weeks away”.

But it looks like the lineup announcement may have just experienced yet another delay. According to a series of recent tweets from Maddah, organisers have hit another snag in finalising the artwork for Soundwave 2016.

According to Maddah, organisers have had to jettison their planned theme. “So we have had to ditch the Evil Christmas theme for next year as it was not to the liking of some of the artists,” he wrote. “Hustling on new theme now.”

It’s not clear just who objected or why, but organising a new theme will presumably push the lineup announcement back even further. When asked if this would be the case, Maddah replied, “Depends on how quickly we can get new art and dress website.”

Naturally, fans aren’t pleased with the news, with many wondering why any band would object to such a seemingly innocuous theme. “I didn’t think anyone would care,” Maddah replied to one commenter. “But apparently quite a few do.”

So it looks as though the Soundwave 2016 lineup announcement date is up in the air again. In the meantime, organisers have drip-fed a small selection of 2016 lineup acts, including Bullet For My Valentine, Dead Letter Circus, Refused, and more.

Having experimented with a two-day format for their last instalment, Soundwave Festival 2016 will see Australia’s premier hard rock and heavy metal event return to the single-day format, hitting up venues in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.