Soundwave Revolution officially cancelled

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• Festivals
• Soundwave

Rumours regarding the future of the forthcoming Soundwave Revolution festival went into overdrive this morning, when the drummer for L.A. band Steel Panther—who are were booked to perform at the inaugural festival in September—tweeted that the event was cancelled.

Since that initial flurry of tweets (and their subsequent hasty deletion), usually outspoken Soundwave promoter AJ Maddah had been suspiciously quiet. Now we know why. According to an interview with Sydney radio station Nova 969, the festival has indeed been cancelled.

The station spoke to Maddah earlier today, who confirmed the cancellation, saying that the festival was called off because the second headline act (rumoured to have been Limp Bizkit UPDATE: Aerosmith) pulled out at the last minute.

Here's a transcription of what Maddah told the station:

"The situation as we know it has been cancelled. The situation is that we were scheduled to make a second announcement on the 1st August, which had our festival co-headliner on that announcement. Their circumstances changed at the last minute and they had to pull out. And unfortunately we don't have enough time to replace them. And we didn't really want to go ahead with an incomplete line-up.

"We were supposed to make the public announcement this evening anyway. But what we wanted to do—because a lot of those bands are still coming and we are creating packages and what have you, for them to do in clubs and other venues—we wanted to be able to make the full announcement at 1pm [today]. So that we could say the festival in its format is no longer happening. That these shows are taking its place. Unfortunately one of those artists [Steel Panther - Ed] jumped the gun.

"The people that have already bought their tickets—I think it's nice enough that people that have already purchased their tickets by credit card, in which case those tickets are automatically refunded. And the small percentage that might have bought it from outlets, they'll be able to get a refund I expect.

"Had we had been able to have our second headliner and make our second announcement, I think we wouldn't have had any issues with [the festival]. And it wasn't for the fact of not being able to attract the artists, I guess we were victims of certain artists circumstances or what have you. I think the Australian festival market is still very strong.

"Obviously we love our fanbase and we try to do what's best for them. And we could have taken the option of limping through with the line-up as we have [it] now. It still would have obviously been a much better financial outcome for us than to go through the road we have – but we just didn’t want to put an inferior product on the market.

"Revolution was a one-off but yes, Soundwave 2012 will be back in February and the line-up is massive."

With still no official word on the Soundwave Facebook, Twitter or Maddah's own busy twitter feed, the lone interview grab with a local station is in stark contrast to the way Soundwave have conducted their Revolution campaign. In a personalised twist to the usual festival announcments, the Soundwave team went to great pains to speak directly to their fanbase. Initially announcing the festival through stark posters early in 2011, the team slowly announced bands one at a time through clues on Twitter and Facebook, allowing fans to discover the ever-growing line-up via word-of-mouth circulating through the nation's metal and rock community. It was a tactic that gained huge consumer trust, but which strangely, has been absent from today's turn of affairs.

UPDATE: Soundwave admins have posted an announcement in the Soundwave forums:

It is with great sadness that we announce the cancellation of the Revolution Festival.

Many of the festival bands will still be coming to Australia in that time period and team up to bring you some very special shows. These will include multi band/mini festival line-ups in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. We will be announcing these events in the next 7 days.

Tickets purchased online will be refunded automatically as soon as it can be processed. If you purchased from an outlet, refunds will be available next week from point of purchase.

More as it comes.

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(Sydney Soundwave 2011 Pic: Nic Bezzina)