SUFFOCATION Cancel ROTTERDAM DEATHFEST Appearance, ABORTED Step In

Reunited death metal legends SUFFOCATION have pulled out of their previously announced headlining appearance at this year's Rotterdam Deathfest, set to take place May 14 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. An official statement from the festival organizers regarding the cancellation reads as follows:

"We are very sorry to inform you that SUFFOCATION cancelled their Rotterdam Deathfest appearance on very short notice. Their booking agent agreed on a show fee with us back in February, together with us taking care of internal transport, catering and hotel costs, which were terms we happily accepted. After a while we didn't get our contracts, which we were promised to have in numerous times, we kept asking for them and always got reassuring replies. We had no reason to doubt his intentions judging all his former e-mails, phone and MSN conversations.

"It turned early April and the booking agent suddenly told us that the band didn't want to do the show, for the sole reason that the agreed and confirmed show fee was too little, all of a sudden. At the same time Guy Marchias of SUFFOCATION mailed us a one-line e-mail saying: 'Our booker says we are not doing this show, please remove us.' Quite odd to see booker blame band and vice versa, isn’t it? Although we had an initial agreement we really wanted SUFFOCATION to headline, regardless the new set of demands which came out of the blue and were totally uncalled for. We already printed and spread posters, tickets, flyers and published advertisements in respected printed media in the Netherlands/Belgium, so we wanted to keep them on the bill by all means, even if we had to spend more money than agreed on and budgeted for. We offered more money on a few occasions totalling up to twice as much as the original agreed fee. To give you a hint, the amount of money was even 50% higher just for SUFFOCATION than the hosting venue paid for the SUFFOCATION, DISGORGE, INSISION and DEMENTOR tour less than one year prior to this event.

"After being led on over and over again without getting promised reply mails, not getting phone calls returned, not catching the booking agent on the phone at pre-agreed times/dates and so on, we drew our own conclusions. The times we did finally catch him by phone we got the same lame excuses from him again, stalling everything as much as possible. Blaming the band for everything, naming them the slow factor in all of this. We believe we are lead on by the booking agent from the beginning and therefore we will never work with him anymore. We also would love to work with SUFFOCATION again in the future, but not as long as they are represented by an amateur like this.

"With 4000 euro worth of misplaced promotion we still need to go on. We know people will be disappointed by the loss of SUFFOCATION, and so are we. We moved GORGASM up to the headline position, and on the original GORGASM position we now added Belgium's finest ABORTED to take over. With the time pressure and all the negative experiences that were going on in the background we are now very relieved, and we thank ABORTED on forehand for helping us out in our time of need. To soften the blow even more for the visitors we will be handing out one free drink ticket on the 14th of May to every visitor."