Some new light has been shed on the clusterfuck that is (or was, before its cancellation) the 2015 Metal Alliance Tour, courtesy of American death-metalers Deicide themselves. Amidst relative silence from the administrative end of things that had fans (and even the bands!) feeling like they’d been left in the dark, the headliners decided to take to their Facebook page over the course of the weekend to set the record straight. Hop on over the jump to see what all the fuss is about!
To bring you up to speed in case you hadn’t heard, the tour was officially cancelled last week, with Swedish death metalers Entombed A.D. receiving the boot (along with Svart Crown) without so much as an explanation. It was later announced that the show would go on more or less as planned, though no longer under the Metal Alliance name and branding, and, of course, devoid of Entombed A.D. Officially, the tour will move forth as a Deicide headline tour featuring support from Hate Eternal, Black Crown Initiate, and Lorna Shore.
Apart from a brief statement from Century Media that surfaced late last week outlining financial woes as the cause for the cancellation, there was little in the way of explanation. That is, there was little in the way of explanation, until Deicide made things abundantly clear through a string of Facebook posts over the past few days:
“These are the final dates to this tour, we could have just said fuck this whole mess, and been done with it! We don’t do business like that and believe there is honor in finishing it not for ourselves but for the fans who deserve to see the band and who expect us to show up! This will be our last U.S. TOUR FOR A LONG LONG LONG TIME, come on out and support these great bands”
“What happen with this tour is this…the agents put together a package that the local promoters had no faith in and couldn’t afford and we’re all asking to cancel their dates, so to keep it going and finish it out entombed were told to go home not by us. But by the agents that set up this tour so the local promoters could still do the shows, we are all in this mess together and I can assure you we will never get involved in anything like this ever again.”
“We had nothing to do with entombed being kicked off tour blame metal alliance, there fucking mess!”
“METAL ALLIANCE IS WHO YOU SHOULD BE ANGRY WITH, THIS FUCKING TOUR IS THERE BIG FUCKING MESS, NOT DEICIDE WE ARE ONLY GUILTY OF AGREEING TO DO THE TOUR!”
And finally,
“Let me put this out there for the people who are still in the blind, the only people canceling shows is your local promoters, so take it up with them were out here playing the shows that aren’t being cancelled by the local promoters!”
Phew. The essence of the message is a little difficult to decipher amidst the sub-par grammar and shouty caps-lock, but I feel fairly confident that what they’re getting at is that THIS WHOLE MESS IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE BANDS BUT OF THE ORGANIZERS AND PROMOTERS. Noted.
Clearly, the whole ordeal has left the bands feeling disenfranchised, to say the least, and with perfectly good reason. It seems sloppy organization and miscommunication are to blame, and it’s unfortunate that the bands have found themselves in this position, as they are, as stated above, “only guilty of agreeing to do the tour”. Above all else, it is disappointing to the fans, who are no longer getting what they paid for. Hopefully, we receive more of a formal explanation from the folks at Metal Alliance soon, though given their silence throughout the course of this entire fiasco, that doesn’t seem likely.
-EW