Yes, we know, that’s a redundant headline. However, after King 810’s December 18th Chicago show was canceled by a promoter over concerns regarding the band’s excessive use of guns and violent imagery, frontman David Gunn released a statement regarding the cancellation. Honestly, to us, it seems a little tone-deaf. In short, he says that not only is the band not apologizing over their imagery or by using guns in their stage show, but situations like Dimebag Darrell’s slaying or the Bataclan massacre last year (not this year, as he states) wouldn’t happen. Here’s some of his statement:
A lot of times when these types of things happen, we take the blame, but we wanted everyone to know that it was out of our control. The gun thing is part of the culture, where we’re from, and is inherently part of the band. It’s not something that we apologize for or regret or anything like that. I don’t think there was any excessive use of guns. We’ve never used guns on anyone at shows at hundreds of shows, and they went on perfectly fine.
Excessive use of guns to me is something like what happened with Dimebag, or just this year, what happened in Paris, that’s excessive use of guns. Guns are a part of our lives and w’ere not going to be caught in those types of situations. So with all due respect to anyone in those types of situations, if anyone ever comes to the front door with automatic rifles, you’re not going to be able to kill 150 people at a King show, they’ll probably be shot from the stage. So the guns aren’t going away, and we won’t apologize for anything.
So basically, by stating this, it’s probably making the promoters breathe a sigh of relief. Essentially, Gunn is saying “there’s no violence at our shows, because if anyone tried to perpetrate violence, they’d get their asses shot by us.” So apparently, those guns onstage are loaded? There’s no word on whether or not the Chicago show is going to be rescheduled, but a statement like Gunn’s probably isn’t helping the cause. And Pantera and Eagles of Death Metal fans probably have a pretty bad taste in their mouths right about now.
That being said, while it’s really up to the promoters, it still seems a little odd to outright cancel the show, and it’d be interesting to know just how many complaints the promoter got to make them take action.
