The Summer Slaughter Tour is an annual heavy metal music tour held every year since 2007. It originated in North America in 2007 and has toured in Canada in 2008, Europe in 2008, and Australia and New Zealand in 2009. Billed as "The Most Extreme Tour of the Year", Summer Slaughter has earned a reputation as being one of the few summer tours to cater exclusively to fans of extreme forms of metal music. Starting in 2012, Summer Slaughter began to add more progressive metal bands to their lineups, seeing Between the Buried and Me co-headline with Cannibal Corpse. Periphery also played Summer Slaughter 2012, and came back during Summer Slaughter 2013, along with progressive metal bands Animals as Leaders and The Ocean. The focus on progressive metal that year was controversial, and death metal