Thanks Glenn (and Jen), I can understand you not wanting to waste any more time talking/thinking about this!
I was told one thing and that statment from them said something opposite. It was basically polishing a steaming turd.
Having some familiarity with how these things work, I basically expect all band statements of this nature to be a lie on some level. But Arcturus's statement didn't really even do that, because it didn't say anything at all! It was just "we're cancelling, and we aren't even going to make up a lie to explain why, we simply won't explain anything at all".
But yeah, I don't really care about the "whys" either, I just wanted to nip dcowboys's "didn't have time to practice" interpretation in the bud, since that seemed to be giving a much too-specific interpretation to a vague message that usually wouldn't be the truth anyway.
To illustrate my point further, I have never dealt with such an unprofessional group of individuals.
Sadly, "unprofessional group of individuals" was my armchair/fan's impression of Arcturus even before you had any dealings with them. Four records with a different label/distribution for each one is just one indicator of a band not particularly serious about turning their music into a long-term career. Again, this is just my view from across the ocean, but the tea leaves suggest to me that Simen might have been the one most interested in turning pro, but failed to convince Sverd or the other guys?
So anyhow, huge credit to you for going out of your way to herd those cats as well as you did, and it was real shitty of them to turn around bite the hand trying to feed them, and worse that they didn't even let you know they were biting you. I'm also sad because this surely lowers your interest in working with similarly "unprofessional" but interesting musicians in the future.
Neil