RAVEN Frontman Explains Abbreviated Spanish Festival Performance

British metal maniacs RAVEN performed an abbreviated set at the Rockzinante Excalibur Metal Festival in Alcala de Henares, Spain last Saturday, September 30. The group's bassist/vocalist John Gallagher has since posted the following message on the band's web site explaining the circumstances being the shortened performance:

"We'd like to apologize to the people that waited all day to see us only to have us play about 30 minutes (at 3:30 a.m.!!!).

"Heres the story: We were all flying from Washington D.C. on Thursday, September 28th. Due to bad weather, Mark's [Gallagher, guitar] flight into D.C. was cancelled and he missed the flight to Paris, so he had to fly the next day — and had to pay full price for another ticket as he was a no-show. So he gets into Paris the day of the show at 1:00 p.m. or so due to the crazy connection time in Paris (35 minutes) he missed that connection too and ended up arriving into Madrid at 7:00 p.m. The airline lost his guitars and amp rack just to add insult to injury. (I had brought one guitar for Mark so he had that at least.) A few bands were nice enough to move their shows forward (thanks DESTRUCTION, thanks DORO!!) but the promoter asked the reps of the others and they wanted to play at their alloted times… so we were told we could play last… at 2 - 3 a.m. and there was a possiblity we could get cut off. So, we gave it a shot… were told to stop and left. Then we were told to come back and play another song. Unfortunately, the sound crew had already started breaking stuff down so we had no vocals… no monitors… so it was 'arse upwards' all the way. So Mark was travelling from Thursday at noon until 10:00 p.m. when he arrived at the gig. After the gig, we got 2 hours sleep and back to the airport to face more cancellations, delays etc… Aaaaaggggghhh.

"The audience: amazingly ALL of them stayed to the end. We thank you. We apologize and hope to make it up to you with a REAL show in 2007."

As previously reported, John Gallagher has commented on the band's recent recording session which produced four new songs — "Against The Grain", "Running Around In Circles", "Breaking You Down" and "Necessary Evil" — at Assembly Line Studios with Kevin 131 (PROJECT: FAILING FLESH, DECEASED, DYSRYTHMIA, GARDEN OF SHADOWS) engineering and mixing.

When asked by a fan on the band's message board if the new songs will be re-recorded for the upcoming CD, Gallagher said, "They are more than good enough to go on the album. We may tweak the mix a little but it's not really needed — they sound THAT good. Actually, I had half of 'Against the Grain' when we did the last album and finished it up a lot later. The production is clear — uncluttered and powerful. Very straightforward... kinda [like] 'Life's a Bitch' with better drum sounds maybe."

RAVEN's last studio album, "One for All", was released in 1999 via Massacre Records.