Obscura - Appearance At Summer Slaughter Cancelled
Due to gear lost and not getting their passports in due time, German progressive metallers Obscura won't be able to participate in the coming Summer Slaughter tour, taking off today in Denver, Colorado.
About the issue, frontman Steffen Kummerer comments: "Obscura won't be able to participate in this year's Summer Slaughter due to visa issues. We started the visa process in April a few days after we confirmed the tour but it seems that US Immigration is a lottery to get a visa in time or not.
We lost all of our flights, our gear is in Los Angeles, our US crew lost their job for a whole month and the 3000 US$ we paid for visas are non-refundable. In total Obscura lost 15000 US$ with this stunt to be straight. This is an existential amount of money for a band of this size. And personally, I face this situation a second time after 2012's Death DTA disaster.
We have been prepared, hired a professional agency to have all visas been applied for correctly and in time - starting in April. The immigration failed to file a necessary I-797 form (the final work permission) from June 3rd - this takes up to two weeks according to their official information but they did not even started at this point, so we won't get an estimate when we can pick up our passports/visas. To clarify, if we would try to get into the country with a tourist visa or without a visa at all the band will get deported on our own costs and get banned from the United States for 10 years.
If we jump on the tour at a later point we will lose even more money since all of our gear, production and breakables arrived in Los Angeles two weeks ago. Also booking flights a second time costs us another 8000 US$. Our coach is based in Los Angeles and paying 1000 US$ per day until we finally would be able to enter the country would ruin the band completely.
It is a bitter, frustrating situation we, our loyal fan base and all promoters and agents have to face right now. We won't give up and we will come back to the United States, but we have to drop off Summer Slaughter 2015."
About the issue, frontman Steffen Kummerer comments: "Obscura won't be able to participate in this year's Summer Slaughter due to visa issues. We started the visa process in April a few days after we confirmed the tour but it seems that US Immigration is a lottery to get a visa in time or not.
We lost all of our flights, our gear is in Los Angeles, our US crew lost their job for a whole month and the 3000 US$ we paid for visas are non-refundable. In total Obscura lost 15000 US$ with this stunt to be straight. This is an existential amount of money for a band of this size. And personally, I face this situation a second time after 2012's Death DTA disaster.
We have been prepared, hired a professional agency to have all visas been applied for correctly and in time - starting in April. The immigration failed to file a necessary I-797 form (the final work permission) from June 3rd - this takes up to two weeks according to their official information but they did not even started at this point, so we won't get an estimate when we can pick up our passports/visas. To clarify, if we would try to get into the country with a tourist visa or without a visa at all the band will get deported on our own costs and get banned from the United States for 10 years.
If we jump on the tour at a later point we will lose even more money since all of our gear, production and breakables arrived in Los Angeles two weeks ago. Also booking flights a second time costs us another 8000 US$. Our coach is based in Los Angeles and paying 1000 US$ per day until we finally would be able to enter the country would ruin the band completely.
It is a bitter, frustrating situation we, our loyal fan base and all promoters and agents have to face right now. We won't give up and we will come back to the United States, but we have to drop off Summer Slaughter 2015."
| facebook.com | |
| Band profile: | Obscura |
| Event: | The Summer Slaughter - North America 2015 |
Posted: 29.07.2015 by Unknown user
Comments
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Comments: 4
Visited by: 25 users
| Necrodamus Posts: 435  |
Awful news. They were one of the only bands I wanted to see on this bill. A shame that the immigration service did that to them. Great band, shitty situation.
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| Bad English Tage Westerlund Posts: 62028  |
Why the hack Germans even need a visa for USA... EU and USA must have some agreement like no visas and free import export. It will be better for integration, safety and also our economics
---- I stand whit Ukraine and Israel. They have right to defend own citizens. Stormtroopers of Death - "Speak English or Die"  I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
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| chronic-headache Posts: 249  |
I was so looking forward to these guys! Sad faces, galore. Hopefully this wont deter them and other European bands from coming to the States. I feel sad for both them and us fans.
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| Enigma Posts: 44  |
I don't remember american bands having such a hard time to enter in the EU, but the opposite happens all the time. Shitty situation, especially for the band, that lost a lot of money.
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