Because they have repeatedly lied and contradicted themselves in interviews regarding the older material - especially Anders. From the good old "the audience doesn't move to the older songs" which was always bullshit, to "we can't recreate all the guitar layers live" which is fine except that you're willing to ignore that for vocals, so what's the difference? It's disrespectful, they should just be honest and say they don't really want to play the older stuff anymore. That's it. Just tell the fucking truth and stop making things up like embarrassed children caught doing something naughty.
Do you envy him? Being interrogated by the same stupid questions since Reroute?
If he were to tell the truth, many people would still be at odds with him. THEY do not want to play those songs, this is extremely clear. They also hate being asked that every single time, and to be honest, after a while it becomes disrespectful. Now, we can argue about white lies, but what's the point?
Has Anders ever told us to buy tickets for these summer festivals, because they will play many songs from TJR and Whoracle, and then played none of it? No. That would have been extremely disrespectful and a serious lie. But him trying to shut down a stupid question with some half-lies is just him or them doing PR interviews.
I watched an interview at Rockfest 2009 where they asked him about Jesper. He said that he has some personal business to take care of, and he will return when he feels like it, but it is nothing new, plenty of members has been absent in the past for various reasons, like being there for their kids, etc, and they managed to solve it. Now, we know that Jesper was not there because he couldn't hold his liquor, so talking about visiting kids basically a half-lie, because you'd think Jesper has some family stuff to take care of. But so what? He did the right thing not to tell the complete truth, because it was frankly none of our business.
What are you talking about? Who said shit about merch?
You don't know what you're talking about.
Never said something like that. Go take some sleep. Then re read what I wrote. You're tired and your brain is not working right.
Yes, that is how record labels work. They sell your stuff, and that's it. If you give your signature t oanything else, that is your problem, but considering how IF never released a greatest hit record, it is heavily implied that they managed to avoid the dark side of the record labels, and now they are big enough to not be afraid of being a slave to them.
I guess metal labels are much less disgusting anyway than mainstream ones.