At the end of April this year, we got hit up by the Lollapalooza organizers. They wanted us to play the festival and potentially add a bonus show in a nearby state. This was all part of the official news announcement. On the actual day of the festival, we were just chilling at the hotel, waiting for some word from the festival staff. Around 4 PM, Therion headed back from the festival grounds and dropped a bomb: there was no power at the venue, and they were planning to cancel everything. You can check out Therion's statement on the link provided. We still hadn't heard a peep from the festival organizers, so we were basically getting ready to pull the plug on our own show too. Then, around 8 PM, an Amon Amarth fan named Gregor gave us a call. As some of you already know, our performance and the whole festival in San Diego ended up being canceled. Even though they really should have made an official announcement explaining why, I figured I’d just lay it out here myself. Amon Amarth and Rage didn't get much warning either—they only had their tickets confirmed five hours before everything went south. They had traveled all the way from London to a nearby city and then faced a six-hour bus ride from there. It was a mess for everyone, including Rage and all those other bands that were supposed to be tearing it up on the second stage. We're definitely going to play in America again in the future, though. We're currently setting up a meeting with the national promoter who signed us—the same guy responsible for booking our future headlining show in Miami. Whether it's Soulfly or Therion, things will get sorted.
We picked up half the deposit a few weeks back, which covered our travel costs. But per the contract, the rest of the cash is supposed to hit our account before we even step on stage. It’s a safeguard so promoters don't pull a disappearing act mid-set or try to hit us with a "sorry, I'm broke" excuse once we've finished playing.
Amon Amarth and Rage weren't upfront with a deposit like we were, but the organizer was strictly supposed to cover their tickets.
Rage didn't even have their flights locked in when they were supposed to, so they pulled the plug just a few days before the festival kicked off.
Can you believe this? Amon Amarth didn't even get their flight confirmation until just 5 HOURS (!) before they were supposed to take off!
We rolled out at 2:30 in the morning, hauled all our gear out of the studio, hit the airport, and caught the 6:40 flight to London before catching a 6-hour bus ride from Trieste. From the moment we lugged our equipment toward the airport at 4:00 AM, it turned into a brutal 17-hour trek just to arrive. We went through hell just to get there—and honestly, we expected the same nightmare on the way back to Sweden—so we were ready to play under conditions we’d usually never touch. We hung around the festival site hoping things would get sorted out, but Soulfly bailed long before us once they realized they wouldn't see a dime even if the technical issues were fixed. Not trying to hate on Soulfly; that's just how any professional outfit would handle it.
Here’s our take on how everything went down that day, based on the facts we managed to dig up:
Where it all went south. By the time we were supposed to be live, the main stage was still a construction zone and they hadn't even broken ground on the second stage. Because the local noise ordinances are brutal—if you go over the curfew, the cops shut the whole thing down immediately—the organizer was stuck. It was either scrap every single band on the second stage or risk the entire festival getting axed. Obviously, that’s a nightmare move. These bands spent their own damn money to get out here, hoping to play a major festival and actually get some eyes on them. But look, if the festival dies, nobody wins, so it was the only logical call left to make. Still, once everything started hitting the fan later that day, I actually asked if someone could step up and explain to the crowd in English exactly why those sets were pulled and who made the call. You can't have people running around with half-baked theories about why things went sideways.
We figured we’d throw in some extra tracks to lift the mood. People were pretty bummed about missing out on Rage and all those other bands that were supposed to kill it on the second stage.
It’s just getting worse. Nothing was remotely ready when we rolled in. We spent an hour just killing time in the sweltering heat—chatting with folks, hitting a shop for some ice cream—until our tour manager finally told us we were wasting our breath. Some of the gear hadn't even shown up yet, so they hauled us back to the hotel. Then, out of nowhere, I get a call at the hotel saying the equipment finally arrived. Only problem? It wasn't the gear we actually ordered. This stuff was settled months ago, and the local promoter explicitly agreed to provide it as part of the contract. Now, suddenly, the organizer is claiming he sent an email saying he *didn't* have what we asked for. That’s a straight-up lie, and we’ve got the email chain saved to prove it. Honestly, that alone is enough legal ground to scrap the show and still collect the full payout. Most tour managers would have pulled the plug right then and there just to teach these clowns a lesson. I talked it over with our tour manager. Since he’s also our sound engineer, I told him if he can make do with what we actually have, we’ll roll with it. We’ll play on whatever junk is available just to keep the festival alive.
The real kicker here is that if the organizer had just been straight with us and said, "Hey, I can't get the gear you asked for," it wouldn't have been an issue. The national promoter in Miami (the guy who actually signed our contracts—we never dealt with the local organizer directly) told me he could’ve easily sorted it out and brought the gear himself! This whole mess happened strictly because the local organizer wouldn't just be honest. Any problem can be fixed if you speak up early, not a few hours before the show starts on the day of.
3. A complete disaster. A few hours later, they dragged us back there. By this point, based on the original schedule, the festival should have been well underway, and we were just gearing up for soundcheck. We pushed through, and after dealing with some issues, we managed to settle on a setup that was somewhat tolerable given the chaos. Look, the only reason we insist on specific gear is because we give a damn about the fans and want them to hear a great show. If you order a Mesa Boogie 2:90 power amp (that's a Ferrari) and they hand you a Marshall 2000 top (that's a beat-up Fiat), it's still better to "drive your fans in that Fiat than let them walk."
Right as we decided to suck it up and try to make it work, the power cut out completely. Almost immediately, we found out the guy renting the diesel generator for the festival hadn't been paid as promised. He told them he wasn't delivering another drop of juice until he saw the cash.
Since that isn't a massive amount of money (for a promoter, anyway—it's a lot for a regular person), it was a huge red flag. I realized right then that the whole thing was probably dead in the water. Ivo (our old Webmaster) had already warned me that this organizer is notorious for stiffing people on payments. A quick bit of math made it obvious: the guy is broke. Shortly after, we heard Soulfly had already called it quits on the show, canceled, and headed to the beach to go swimming. Even the national promoter told me the night we arrived that he was fed up with the local organizer for being totally incompetent.
Legally, the generator guy was in the right, but honestly? He’s a total moron. An absolute idiot. You don't just yank the plug when there’s high-end gear hooked up to the line. If he had any sense at all, he would have said, "I haven't been paid, so I'm cutting the power in five minutes." Beyond the gear on stage potentially breaking, there's a massive risk of frying the PA system or the mixing desk if you just kill the power like that. You’re supposed to lower the volume, hit standby, and *then* switch it off. Since the PA was brand new and top-tier, the rental company (who also hadn't been paid upfront, which is standard) suddenly claimed they couldn't guarantee if the gear suffered short-term or long-term damage. Now they were demanding cash on the table before they'd let us touch it again. What started as a struggle to find some cash turned into a total impossibility. Plus, if the organizer couldn't even cover the electric bill, how the hell was he going to pay the bands? That's what Soulfly figured out; instead of sitting around the festival grounds wasting time, they went for a swim so they could at least get something out of their trip to the US. I don't blame them one bit.
4. The end. The organizer had a window to scrape the money together and get the lights back on. Time ticked away, and nothing happened. Eventually, the tour manager and management declared the show canceled (after conferring with the national promoter, who held the actual contracts) and told our crew to start loading out. Even while we were packing, nothing changed. Rumors started flying that the power might come back, but that was just the national promoter trying to make sure the bands didn't get screwed over. He actually went out and spent his own money on 30 liters of diesel for the generator and started playing a recorded announcement. Apparently, he managed to talk the generator owner into using his diesel to get things moving.
5. We’d been on the road for 17 hours straight after barely scraping together two hours of sleep the night before. We spent the entire day just waiting, clinging to a tiny shred of hope even though deep down we knew the odds were basically zero. We spent time talking to some local bands who were understandably crushed—they’d spent their own damn money to get there just to have everything fall apart. Ivo and his crew had traveled a massive distance too, just like so many other fans. The whole vibe was just bleak and depressing. Honestly, we just wanted to bail as fast as we could, so we helped the roadies pack up the gear and jumped on the bus to get the hell out of there.
Management was dead set on moving us out of the city immediately for security reasons. To be fair, we didn't see any angry fans looking to start trouble with the bands, but after that mess back in 2001 in South America—where the organizers had to scrap our headlining set because of rain and the whole stage turned into a giant lightning rod! People actually attacked the hotel and smashed windows until the cops showed up, so management doesn't play games. They pull the band out just to be 100% safe, even if the fans are acting perfectly reasonable like they were in San Diego. Plus, we don't want to be the reason a hotel or a bus company gets hit with a lawsuit.
That meant we headed north toward the border, which put us much closer to the airport. It allowed us to grab five hours of sleep instead of the two or three we were planning on, which at least made the flight home suck a little less.
