Festival Organizers Say They Were Justified In Pulling Plug On TESTAMENT

The organizers of this year's Bang Your Head festival have issued a statement explaining the circumstances behind TESTAMENT's abbreviated set at the event, which was held June 25-26 in Balingen, Germany. The statement reads as follows:

"Many visitors were annoyed as the show of Bay Area thrashers TESTAMENT found a sudden end on the Saturday of this year's Bang Your Head and the amps were turned off while the band was still playing. Unfortunately, certain unpleasant circumstances left no other choice left for us.

"The background information: The band had overrun their stage schedule by far. Before TESTAMENT started their changeover and their soundcheck, there had been a delay on stage of about 10 minutes that had been caused by other bands. We asked the responsible tour manager and the band's sound technician to do the soundcheck as quickly as possible in order to try to make up at least some of the lost time. Unfortunately, our call was unheard and the soundcheck took an awfully lot of time. That wasn't all, though: After everything was finally checked and prepared, the sound technician hit the road to the PA tower. On arrival, he noticed he had forgotten something and went all the way back to the stage — through the audience! When he arrived at the tower a second time, TESTAMENT had used twice as much time for the changeover than scheduled (40 instead of 20 minutes). Therefore, the overall dealy had summarized to more than 30 minutes. Unfortunately, we do have strict curfew set up by the city of Balingen saying that the headliner's show has to end at 11 PM. ICED EARTH agreed to shorten their set by two songs and we told TESTAMENT's tour manager that his band has to shorten its set as well. He was supposed to inform the band about that — but he actually just wouldn't do. Though he shared the stage with the guys and we asked him several times to deliver the important information to the band, he kept on ignoring our request didn't pass anything forward to Chuck Billy and the guys, resulting the band to play on and on. Finally, we had no other choice left than to put the most unpleasant and unpopular end to the show and pull the plug. We feel very sorry for the fans of TESTAMENT and the band itself. Everything could have gone less unpleasant if there had been just a bit more professional and cooperative attitude on the part of the band's tour manager and sound technician."