Obscura forced to drop Summer Slaughter due to visa issues

The Summer Slaughter tour just started and, even though it isn’t as chaotic as Mayhem Festival, it has already encountered some issues. We reported about After The Burial pulling off the bill after their former guitarist Justin Lowe passed away and they needed some time to deal with their friend’s loss; earlier this month, Obscura’s drummer Sebastian Lanser suffered an injury and had to sit out the scheduled tour across North America but the band quickly found a replacement to cover the throne; but bad luck finally caught up with the Germans and now they are forced to drop the entire tour due to visa issues.

The band made a statement explaining the situation:

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.

Sincerely,
Steffen Kummerer

That’s certainly a bummer for many, including myself, who have been waiting for the band to come back since their last tour in 2012. Go check out the rest of the tour package and support the remaining bands on the dates below:

7/28 – Denver, CO @ The Summit Music Hall
7/30 – Des Moines, IA @ Val Air Ballroom
7/31 – Minneapolis, MN @ Skyway Theater
8/01 – Joliet, IL @ Mojoes
8/02 – Cleveland, OH @ The Agora Theatre
8/03 – Columbus, OH @ The Northland Performing Arts Center
8/05 – Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
8/06 – Hamilton, ON @ Club 77
8/07 – Montreal, QC @ Heavy MTL
8/08 – Worcester, MA @ The Palladium
8/09 – Sayreville, NJ @ Starland Ballroom
8/12 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall w/ The All Stars Tour
8/14 – Richmond, VA @ Gwar-B-Q Fest
8/15 – Knoxville, TN @ The International
8/17 – Dallas, TX @ Gas Monkey Live
8/18 – Austin, TX @ Empire Control Room & Garage
8/20 – Tempe, AZ @ The Marquee
8/21 – San Diego, CA @ House of Blues
8/22 – Anaheim, CA @ City National Grove Of Anaheim
8/23 – San Francisco, CA @ The Regency Ballroom
8/24 – Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater