OPETH: Jordan Gig Cancelled!

November 26, 2003

OPETH have been forced to cancel their previously announced gig in Jordan due to sickness.

The following is OPETH frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt's official statement on the matter:

"It's seem to be a dark spell upon OPETH at this moment. First Chile and now Jordan. I'm in a terrible state myself right now but will try to explain to you our reasons for cancelling.

"[OPETH drummer] Martin Lopez called me 10 minutes before I was supposed to get in the cab for the airport saying he couldn't go. He's suffered a stress-related breakdown and said he simply couldn't do this. We've never cancelled a gig ever before due to the state of the band, so I knew he was serious when he said this. He has a doctors appointment and my guess is that he's suffering from panic or anxiety attacks. This is the reason why we decided to cancel this gig in Amman, Jordan.

"Yesterday our entire (all but one) crew dropped off due to the recent terrorist attacks. See, our crew is from the UK and were worried they'd be going into trouble. So at one point we had no crew, and the gig was in danger of being cancelled. After close talk with Mute Records we decided that we'll go anyways regardless if we had enough crew guys or not, and now this!!

"I want to stress out to all the fans that has travelled high and low to get to the venue in Amman that we are beyond sorry! I can't tell you how bad we feel about this. We sincerely hope that we'll get another chance to do a gig in Jordan soon, in fact we are trying to talk to Mute Records about that possibility. All of us really looked forward to going to Amman, not only because of the gig but also because there was a day set out for us to do some serious sightseeing of your country.

"These are dark times for OPETH and it seems like the circumstances got the best of us this time. We've done over 150 gigs this year I believe so in a way I'm not surprised.

"As I'm writing this I've just got informed about a death in the Akerfeldt family so my mind is not what it should be. I'm trying to keep it together here and explain to you, and apologize for all the problems we've caused.

"Anyways, we love you all and again, we're so sorry!! I'm gonna post something about Martin Lopez state as soon as I know myself."

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