I guess this could be predicted, but I was hoping against hope that it wouldn’t happen: Gojira’s North American tour with Lamb of God and Dethklok that was scheduled to begin right here in the Emerald City on August 1 has been canceled. I just saw this morbid news on Heavy Blog Is Heavy, and “borrowed” their modification of the tour poster as well. HBIH also included the following statements by Lamb of God and Dethklok:
LAMB OF GOD:
“Due to the continued incarceration of LAMB OF GOD singer Randy Blythe in the Czech Republic, the band’s co-headline tour with Dethklok scheduled to begin August 1st in Seattle is being cancelled. The band regrets the decision but the uncertainty of Randy’s release makes it impossible to carry on with the tour. Upon Randy’s release, it is the band’s intention to rebook a tour in the fall and at this time the band fully intends to participate in the Mayhem Cruise in December.
LAMB OF GOD wishes to thank Dethklok, Adult Swim and Gojira for their support and patience as well as all of the promoters who had dates on the tour. Last but certainly not least, the band thanks all of the fans who bought tickets for the tour and who have been supportive of Randy and the band over the last month that Randy has been held in Prague. Without the fans, there is no LAMB OF GOD.”
DETHKLOK:
“In light of circumstances beyond our control, the upcoming Dethklok and Lamb of God with Gojira summer tour has been canceled. Refunds will be available to customers who already purchased tickets through their point of purchase. We thank Dethklok fans for their continued support and look forward to releasing information about the band’s upcoming third album and a planned fall tour in the coming weeks.”
Okay, fine, so maybe LoG will organize a new tour whenever Randy Blythe is allowed to leave the Czech Republic and maybe Dethklok will find another way to hit the road soon, but honestly, what I really want to know is what Gojira are going to do.
Unfortunately, I’ve not yet found any news from the Gojira camp about whether they will try to replace the LoG tour with something else. If and when I do, I will post again.
In the meantime, I’m left angrily wondering why LoG couldn’t enlist another vocalist to take Blythe’s place on this tour — someone who would have been a draw, someone who might have put an interesting spin on LoG’s songs — rather than sacrifice the revenue that this tour would have generated for the band, revenue which I suspect Blythe is going to need to fund his legal defense. I assume high-profile vocalists whose own bands aren’t touring, particularly vocalists who are friends of Blythe, would have stepped up.
Now I’m going to go and weep softly into a pillow, after which I’ll start throwing breakable shit against the wall. FuckShitPissMotherfuckerBastardAss! Fuck.
11 Responses to “WELL, FUCKITALL: GOJIRA’S TOUR WITH LAMB OF GOD AND DETHKLOK IS KAPUT”
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Sacramento will happily welcome those two bands to play shows here without Lamb of God since they seemed to have forgotten us on the regular tour.
well that sucks!!!! especially for you Islander 🙁 . Hope all the best for Mr. Blythe
🙁
I feel ya dude
“why LoG couldn’t enlist another vocalist”
Exactly my thought. It’s not like he’s even an indispensable member of the band. There aren’t many band members that couldn’t be replaced in a pinch.
I have always been under the impression that Blythe remains one of the most unique vocalists out there. His particular range and set of skills make him very much a key instrument in the band, moreso than just a cult of personality frontman, and thus indespensable to a full live experience and part of the signature LOG sound. Im refering to the different “characters” his voice takes on throughout the albums in particular, and his general refined ability for harsh vocals in general. Yeah anybody can scream well, but not many can really perform those songs like him.
Speaking for myself, I didn’t mean to imply that someone else could do what Randy does for LoG’s music. In fact, I thought it would indeed sound different, and maybe that would be interesting. I was mainly just puzzled that the band would jettison the money from this tour instead of trying to carry on without him. They could have still given people a chance to request a refund after announcing a replacement, to see how many people would bail out.
I suppose another option — though I suspect it would have been much more difficult to pull off on such short notice — would have been to make Dethklok the headliner (or Gojira and Dethklok as co-headliners) and pulled in a couple of other bands to join the tour. But the organizers still would have had to give people who bought tix the option to get their money back.
I respectfully disagree. While he does have some range of skill, he can still be replaced by someone else with a similar skill set. Dez Fafara immediately comes to mind, although I’m sure he’s busy with his own thing right now. The guy from Daath could also pull it off. Two, off the top of my head. They wouldn’t sound the same, but they would work quite well.
NOOOOOOOOOOO! This is proof that god is an evil fucking bastard. A fucking cock tease. Now I’ll have blue balls for the rest of my life. We must kill god! Kill god to save us from blue balls!
You gotta find him first to kill him. Good luck with that. 🙂
Glad this got canceled, now Gojira can headline themselves without the useless headliners
That would be just fine with me. At least Gojira is still coming to NorthAm to play the Heavy TO and Heavy MTL fests in Canada, but so far the only U.S. show they’ve announced is a one-off in NYC:
http://www.blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=177386