PoS and Beardish off PN '09

[kellsco]

From the MP site:

For Immediate Release
June 22nd, 2009


It is with the utmost disappointment that I am forced to share the unfortunate news of both Pain Of Salvation and Beardfish having to pull out of this summer's Progressive Nation tour....

Their label Inside Out just recently lost the financial funding for the tour as a result of their distributor SPV recently claiming bankruptcy...which effectively meant that both Pain Of Salvation and Beardfish lost the tour support that was essential to their ability to come to North America for Progressive Nation.

All parties involved (myself, both bands, Inside Out, etc) are beyond devastated at this turn of events and are truly sorry to all of the fans that were looking forward to this lineup. We tried everything we could do to salvage the situation, but in the end it was not possible...

Well as the album title says, every Black Cloud does indeed have a Silver Lining....so with this unfortunate news, I bring to you the good news of 2 incredible bands that will jumping on board Progressive Nation to join Dream Theater and Zappa Plays Zappa this summer: Bigelf and Scale The Summit.

Los Angeles' Bigelf are my personal favorite new band to come along in many years...their latest CD "Cheat The Gallows" is my favorite album of the year and I already had positioned them onto the European run of Progressive Nation in the Fall....with them now joining us on PN09 in North America as well, it looks like world domination is now not that far out of reach for them!
Pretty soon, everyone will hopefully be falling for their retro, psychedelic, progressive, hard rock, doom metal as hard as I have!

Houston instrumental band Scale The Summit are a recent discovery for me and their top notch musicianship will be a perfect fit to this Progressive Nation lineup stylistically falling very nicely between the musicality of Dream Theater and Zappa Plays Zappa. They bring the instrumental elements of prog rock and fusion into today's contemporary hard rock/metal sounds and are one of the most talented group of young musicians I've seen assembled in many years.

Once again, apologies to anybody disappointed in this unexpected and unavoidable lineup change...but the circumstances were beyond our control...
In any event, PN09 will carry on and still deliver the most musical bang for its buck this summer throughout North America and we look forward to sharing the evening with you!

Sincerely,
Your Progressive Rock Ambassador,
Mike Portnoy

 

[jaimek]

Oooh, man. I'm glad now I didn't make any plans to go (worst time of year for me).


What's your bet PoS finds themselves a new label within the next six months?

 

[imaskinbeater]

I actually love Scale The Summit so I don't mind the switch.

 

[Braxil]

Very disappointing.

 

[Jax]

I didn't know any of IO's bands even still relied on them for tour support. Huh.

 

[zedowns]

I'm getting my fucking money back.

 

[jaimek]

Might explain a lot about Evergrey's difficulties in getting across the Atlantic, too...

 

[Jax]

Kind of sad for EG that they went from IO to SPV & ended up in the same boat they'd have been in if they hadn't left to begin with.

 

[johan68]

I'm getting my fucking money back.

+1

 

[Soundscape]

30mins of PoS seemed rather short. Scale the Summit honestly sounded pretty boring to me when I checked them out earlier this year. What pisses me off most is having done the amount of promotion for this thing, it makes me look bad.

If I were Portnoy, instead I'd have just extended the length of DT's and ZPZ set especially. Nearly every single person I've talked to about this show only know/would be going for DT and/or ZPZ anyway.

 

[TheLongshot]

+1

+2. Those two bands were the only reason why I bought a ticket. Now it isn't worth starting my vacation late to go.

 

[Ascension]

Nearly every single person I've talked to about this show only know/would be going for DT and/or ZPZ anyway.

Same here.

 

[dcowboys311]

I like both Bigelf and Scale the Summit much more than PoS (never listened to Beardfish) so this is great news!!!

 

[sava_freak]

Totally devestated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Although Scale the Summit I can deal with I like them!

A

 

[TENTH DREAMER DECEIVER]

I'm only going for DT anyway so no loss on my part!

 

[J-Man]

Scale the Summit will steal this show outright. These young guys from Houston are awesome, and I had the honor of having them play on the bill of the show I did in Houston in 2007.

 

[sccaldwell]

I'm a mix of shocked, pissed, and massively disappointed.

I have tickets to see this tour twice (DC and Asheville, NC), mostly because I wanted to see PoS twice (and I'm dragging my country-listening brother to the Asheville show, too...he wanted to see DT, but I wanted him to see DT *and* PoS).

Still happy to see DT, but the replacements are a let-down to me, simply because they aren't PoS. Nothing against them personally...I don't actually know either band at all. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised by them, but I'll miss seeing PoS.

C'est la vie, but it sucks ass big-time.

Craig

 

[lady_space]

Well, I wish this had been announced yesterday before I admitted I would be paying $50 just to see a 30-minute set by PoS... and promptly got made fun of.

I'm still very disappointed not to be seeing them.

 

[Pellaz]

I actually love Scale The Summit so I don't mind the switch.

+1

While I would have liked to see PoS again, even for 30 minutes, I missed seeing Scale the Summit at Texas MadFest due to regrettable circumstances...and when I pulled up in the fest's shuttle-van just after they'd finished warming up the crowd for Texas MadFest itself, everyone there was raving about 'em.
I've gotten some good phone calls about 'em when I've played StS on WREKage since then, too.

Now I finally get to see 'em!

 

[BlindPanzer]

how do we go about getting a refund?