The festival has been cancelled. The organizer has posted a statement on http://www.wsoa.mydriasis.ch. The translation reads as follows:


"Hello everybody...

Unfortunately I've got bad news. Until the very last moment I've tried to make it possible, but now it's official: I have no other choice than cancelling Waldschrat Metal Festival 2008. In the following I'll try to explain some of the reasons:

As you might know we've had quite some problems until we've found a suitable location. Eventually we got hold of the hall at the sports field in Allendorf in the district of Katzenelnbogen. Instantly we got in touch with the responsible public order office and signed the contracts. After some delays they requested me to file a written application as to clarify their remaining doubts. In the end it turned out though that the planned festival area judicially belonged to the forest - which the public order office didn't seem to know about - which means that actually the forestry office holds the responsibility. The forestry office in turn decided that the owner of the forest should decide, in this case the municipality of Allendorf. Less than 48 hours prior to the voting within the town council I've been informed of this voting, so that I was stripped of sensible measures to present the event to the council. Because of this, and apparently because some residents from Allendorf were up in arms against the event, the result of the voting was predictable: 8 votes against, 2 votes for the festival and 2 abstentions. This means: despite of a signed contract, the approval of the public order office and the police, etc. and the agreement of the mayor I was prohibited to hold the event - officially in support of "nature conservation". Any further arguments were senseless. This happened less than 3 weeks prior to the festival. Immediately I've called upon my contacts and tried to organize another location, and I did get some quite promising offers which all should have worked, but then I've received one cancellation after another, some of them with very dubious justifications. On Monday I received a cancellation from the last possible location and I had no other choice than cancelling the festival.

Irrespective of all this our web server crashed at about the same time, making it impossible to reach the festival website or contact either of the @waldschrat-festival.de or @waldschrat-openair.de e-mail addresses, and it couldn't be brought back until merely a few hours ago. Naturally everyone expected a correlation and that I would try to hide from the responsibility? I'm not trying to cash in on anyone or hide from the consequences; the server crash just was an inconvenient coincidence at a very inconvenient time.

All this is also the reason why I didn't ship any tickets during the last three weeks and have responded only to very few e-mails, of both bands and visitors. I was just too busy trying to rescue the festival? unfortunately without success.

In particular I'd like to apologize and extend my gratitude for the support to:
Trollzorn, Marco Böhm, Jochen Theis, Frederick Range, Ronja Hoben, Erich Zakowski, Tanja Nusser, Legacy Magazin, Simone Ohler (in no particular order)
And to all the bands and the people who've ordered tickets and whom I've had to put off all the time.

I know this is quite hard. Many of you have taken days off, have booked train or even flight tickets and hotel rooms, etc. Believe me, this isn't easy for me either, especially as this cancellation means several thousands euros debts. We've booked 23 bands from all over Europe, have handed out 30,000 flyers, pressed a CD, organised a warm-up concert, arranged everything from medical service to catering, wove bracelets, booked flights, invited vendors, made promises? and now we stand here, directly before the festival, without location. This festival was my dream, the sole content of my life for the past six months and a lot more important than any of you can imagine. I'd do anything to make it real - but obviously this still wasn't enough.

In about a week we'll start with the reversion of all ticket purchases. Please give me some time to arrange everything. Please refrain from interrogating via e-mail, as soon as everything is arranged it will be published here.

As a small compensation and kind of an "apology" a concert will take place on Friday (6/27) in the Club Helvete in Oberhausen. Among others REV 16:8 from Sweden and Men Enter Tavern from Bergisch Gladbach will be performing. More bands from the WSOA lineup and further information will be announced soon, here and on www.helvete.de. I hope to see at least some of you there. Furthermore we consider organizing a substitute event at a later time; so far nothing is fixed though.

I'm off to lick my wounds.

Disappointed, desperate, frustrated and clueless,
Thorin"