TRIVIUM Bassist 'Wouldn't Be Surprised' If MEGADETH + LAMB OF GOD Tour Got Postponed

TRIVIUM bassist Paolo Gregoletto says that he "wouldn't be surprised" if the band's previously announced North American tour with MEGADETH, LAMB OF GOD and IN FLAMES got postponed.

The 55-date trek is currently scheduled to be split into two legs. The first leg of the tour kicks off June 12 at Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia, and wraps August 1 at the Concord Pavilion in Concord, California. The second run launches October 2 at iTHINK Financial Amphitheater in West Palm Beach, Florida, and runs through November 13 at the Reno Events Center in Reno, Nevada.

As coronavirus continues to spread, live event organizers have been canceling or postponing large gatherings from technology conferences to major concerts. Asked in a new interview with MetalSucks Quarantine Chats if he thinks the MEGADETH/LAMB OF GOD tour will suffer the same fate, Paolo said (see video below): "Obviously, Live Nation is running the show with that thing, so at the end of the day, they're gonna be the final say of what happens. What I think will happen will be — the worst-case scenario is the dates will get moved. But it's one of those things, everything is up in the air of, like, if you move dates, is this really gonna be handled in the time frame that everyone's moving their dates to? So I'm not totally sure. It's really hard to say. 'Cause at the moment, it just seems like things are accelerating here, so I wouldn't be surprised if things have to get moved. We're just kind of taking it as it comes. It's out of our hands."

He continued: "It's just a crazy experience, because the entire music industry which, up until recently, has been, like, oh, it's been boom years. And just overnight, literally, the door has been slammed, and we're all just kind of sitting here, like, 'What are we gonna do?'"

According to Paolo, it remains to be seen exactly how much of a hit TRIVIUM will take financially if the band is unable to tour for the foreseeable future.

"Merch-wise [for the tour], I think they don't really print that stuff until a lot closer to it, so we're not sitting on a bunch of merch — thankfully," he said. "Most of it's just been what we're doing for the album release, that kind of stuff. We did start to get production made, like designed, for the tour, so I think we're still going through with that, but in terms of actually physically getting it made and getting that, I'm sure we're just gonna kind of play it by ear. We don't wanna get something made and then the tour gets moved to way off into the future. If anything, a decision will probably have to get made probably in the next couple of weeks, I would imagine, with that."

TRIVIUM will release its ninth album, "What The Dead Men Say", on April 24 via Roadrunner Records. The LP will be the follow-up to "The Sin And The Sentence", which came out in October 2017. That effort marked the band's first release with drummer Alex Bent, who joined TRIVIUM in 2016.