Defenders Of The Faith, le forum Metal

It really hurts to write this, but at this point, we have absolutely no choice left, than to cancel the last part of the continental-European part of our European tour (München, Cottbus and Vienna).
Presales have been really low on most of the tour, to the point where we have had to negotiate with several venues and promoters about keeping the shows alive (as we (normally) never cancel shows, even if they have low presales). At most of the venues, people have turned up in the end anyway for the shows, but since München chose to pull the plug on our show there, we'd be left with 3 offdays and then driving to Cottus-Vienna and back to Willich (around Essen), before heading home. It's simply not economically feasible, as we need to pay nightliner, driver, technicians and so on and so forth. Losing 2000€ per day to play a show is sadly not an option.
Why low presales?
Well, all promoters have said the exact same thing on the tour: They have low presales for all shows - around 30-40% of their usual sales, as it seems people are still afraid that shows are getting cancelled. Talk about a catch-22, here.
We are not the first band to cancel, and we won't be the last, but this situation is so unusual to us, that we feel a huge blow to our stomachs, and we sincerely apologize to the fans that DID buy a ticket, but hope for your understanding.
We will head home, re-group and play the last planned shows in June (Helsinki Metal Horizons, Apollo in Turku and Rock Imperium in Cartagena) and we hope to see you out there, some day in some way.
Tickets will naturally be refunded at your ticket vendor.
Kristian, Lars, Kasper, Stefan and Lawrence.