ROYAL HUNT: 'We're Not The Ones To Blame' For European Tour Cancellation

Danish/American hard rockers ROYAL HUNT have issued the following statement regarding the cancellation/postponement (see previous BLABBERMOUTH.NETstory) of their European tour:

"Just got home and saw that there´s a lot of different 'statements' and other general opinions (mostly negative) on our recent tour cancellation / rescheduling. Well, the following is not in any way 'official' (not from a record company or management) — just our side of the story.

"Tour went along just fine. On the last three gigs support band joins the caravan and everybody's happy. On the way to Germany, woke up kinda late (alright, we did some partying the night before) only to realize that the bus is holding still on some kind of parking lot in the middle of nowhere. Bus driver talks about cancellation and he's got an order from his boss to sit tight until the whole situation is resolved. OK, trying to reach somebody 'upstairs,' but no luck. After a couple of hours it all clears up — a main sponsor of the tour pulls the plug (due to some legal difficulties),so the whole thing is put on hold and we're going home. Nice. So now we're stuck with a substantial bill from the bus company (incl. cancellation fee),bill from the main tour promoter, boxes of merch, salaries to the crew etc. We're all upset and on top of that everybody with access to a computer is throwing rocks at us — thank you.

"Let's take some of the 'most popular' points:

"'ROYAL HUNT doesn´t care about their fans':

"Well, we played our hearts out on every single show — big or small — for two hours straight. After each gig we went (all of us) to the bar and chat with everybody, took pictures with the fans and signed whatever stuff they´ve got for 30-40 minutes. Every show.

"'ROYAL HUNT doesn´t care about their support bands':

"We've only played three shows with SECRET SPHERE (very talanted bunch, by the way),but they were treated beyond good (and we know what we're talking about — did some support gigs ourselves with no soundchecks, no catering, no room on stage etc). When their management/promoter forgot to send their rider to the club owner — we invited the guys to our dressing room, shared catering with them, on the first two shows we let them use Kenneth's drums to ease their setup, we moved our gear to make more room for the guys on stage, our crew was helping them with whatever needed, guys had souncheck LONGER than us EVERY TIME (we want our support band to sound good).

"'ROYAL HUNT left their support band(s) after the last gig in Italy hanging high'n' dry':

"Do you REALLY think that — if we knew about what was going on (cancellation etc) — we´d let a young Italian band drive through the night from Italy to Germany only to turn around and go back to Italy again the next morning?! It's not even idiotic, it's sadistic. Come on!

"We all feel sorry for the guys — we've been 'abandoned' ourselves a few times in the past, so we know how it feels.

"'ROYAL HUNT are just plain greedy':

"Until the last show in Italy we were doing fine, but after our sponsor pulled out we'd have been facing losses on every second show and we're sure as hell not paying to play! That's the reason why we cancelled some shows, rescheduling some of them and getting some new ones as we speak — we´ll keep you posted.

"By the way, we DO NOT getting paid by support bands — they have their own deals with promoters and NONE of the 'support band money' ending in our pockets.

"And to sum the whole deal up — after almost six months of booking/preparing this tour, month and a half of rehearsals, investments in gear-merch-backdrops and tons of other stuff — will we just drop the whole thing 'just becouse we felt like it?!!' We can't control everything — we´re musicians, not managers/sponsors/promoters and in this unfortunate situation we're most definately not the ones to blame."