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Thunder of Gods poster
Thunder of Gods Festival was going to be the first of its kind in Texas. Held in Dripping Springs, it was touted as a multi-genre (though mostly metal) event to rival the giant festivals of Europe. Tickets were available for months, and the posters boasted a roster of nearly 100 bands from all over America and Europe. Today, however, cellphones all over Texas were ablaze with the news that the festival had been completely canceled on no notice. As of this writing, details surrounding this fiasco are few, but it has been confirmed that literally dozens of bands who flew in for Saturday appearances are now stranded at Austin-Bergstrom Airport and are left to make their own way home to places as far away as Italy and Russia. Proscriptor McGovern, drummer of the Dallas occult metal band Absu, stated to this reporter that when his band arrived in Austin by plane, he received a short text message from the promoter stating that the concert was cancelled and that nobody was coming to pick them up. It is also presumed that ticket holders from all over the state have arrived to an empty concert site with no answers as to why there is no festival or if they will receive a refund. If you're from out of town, you might want to catch Motorhead's own Lemmy and his rockabilly side project The Head Cat tonight at Nutty Brown Cafe. Look for a follow-up report about the Thunder of Gods incident, which will arrive as soon as information is available.
Comments
Clearly a massive hoax.
If there was money involved, I think the correct term here would be fraud...
Will Pruett of Dayton is the scumbag responsible for all of this. Hopefully no one ever trusts this waste of life with their money ever again.
This is from Lucid Dementia's blog
Thunder Of the God's Fest canceled!
............Wow. Ouch. Seriously, the turnout had been bad. Audiences mostly consisted of the different band members. It made for a really relaxed atmosphere, lots of camaraderie and networking all around, but financially wise, it was killing the promoter. I saw Thrill Kill Kult play last night with about 40 other people. Seriously folks, for those of you that didn't make it, you missed something really special. It was a huge opportunity to get up close and personal with some extremely amazing bands. I feel especially bad for the bands that came from as far away as Baltimore to play it, and are now having to head home empty handed... wow.
Please know that yes this was organized by Will Pruett of Dayton, and NOT by a local Austin promoter. Will worked with some members of local bands, as well as local music professionals to provide the sound, but it was all under the guise that they would get paid and that proper promoting would be done. It obviously was not.
-Sheldon
Lucid Dementia
Go to locallyowneddayton.com if you feel like giving Mr. Pruett a piece of your mind.
Well I was there. I allowed him to add my radio show as a sponsor and to be honest this event was suppose to have taken place last year but the venue in Illinois had to shut down due to a violation. So Will informed me that it would be taking place in Texas. I found this as a chance to meet some great bands and more so I told him to include my radio show. I had stuff to give out and grant it, the turn out was not huge but again to us in this business its about the bands, networking and having a great time. But I guess due to the turn out, he cut his losses and bailed. Thursday & Friday night was ok. I was shocked with the amount of industral bands on the main 2 stages and the metal bands on the small 3rd stage. Then long behold I arrive on the camp grounds Saturday morning around 1030am only to hear that the sound people are packing up cause they didn't get paid. I was shocked! So I go down to the campground just to find out it was true. Bands didn't know what to think and I felt it was only fair for me to stick it out with the bands also because I wasn't promised money for this event. I paid my own money, booked a motel and rental car. EVERY BAND that was to perform Saturday saw that I was there for them and even the people. I stuck around the campgrounds just to let bands that were coming in know what the hell happened. I was just as upset simply because I allowed him to use me as a sponsor for this event. So the fact he almost gave my radio show a bad rep is reason enough for me to have anger along with all the bands. So the positive in all of this is that ALL THE BANDS as well as myself have bonded along with a few other media sources that were on the campgrounds. On my radio show tonight (May 12th/13th 2009) I will be talking about this event in detail along with a few of the bands that were screwed over. www.eggsandkegsradio.com Midnight (Eastern Time) / 11pm Central Time
LOTS TO TALK ABOUT FOR TONIGHT SHOW! I WAS THERE!
I don't think it was a hoax. I think Pruett was promising all things to all people. My industrial band, XUBERX, was told that it would be mainly an industrial show. Obviously metal bands were told the opposite. I think Pruett got there, paid for as much as he could, ran out of money Friday night, and freaked out.
And that's inexcusable.
I'm inclined to think it wasn't a hoax; there is a lot of anger from a lot of different places. Check the MySpace pages of the bands as well as a cached version of the Thunder of the Gods MySpace page...
We're following the story over at TwoGroove as well.
www.twogroove.com/blog
My band Primordius was supposed to play there and this article is so true. We are from Dallas, only 2 hours away and we showed up to this big disapointment. Luckily we had a couple friends in Austin and our boys Impaler and Mobile Deathcamp got us a gig at Emo's with them and Bloodsoaked.
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