Although Anthrax will continue celebrating their 40th anniversary in Western Canada on another North American tour early next year, the New York thrash metal legends were forced to cancel a European run in 2022 due to "ongoing logistical issues and 2022 costs that are out of our control."
Bassist Frank Bello elaborated on the context of the cancellation, which the band announced via Facebook on August 31, in a new interview with TotalRock's Neil Jones.
"When I saw the numbers, they were literally triple what they originally started at," Bello said of the cost estimates for the European dates. "We would be coming home at such a loss. You don't mind a little bit of a loss just to play to the fans, but such a loss — we would have been really bad off for a while. So it didn't make sense."
Jones proceeded to ask if a "Brexit thing" was actually behind Anthrax cancelling, Bello responded, "It's a human thing at this point, My God."
He added, "I mean, it's a budgetary thing," continuing, "After COVID, when everything went crazy, money-wise, financially it wasn't feasible to do it anymore. When [we] looked at it, we said, 'All right. There's better times ahead.' And that's the way to look at it now. Look, heating costs and everybody's gotta put food on the table. I get it right now. So it's just a really hard time for everybody."
Anthrax are among the likes of Animal Collective, Santigold, Metronomy and more artists who have cancelled tours due to budgetary constraints in the economic reality of 2022 touring, which Lorde recently described as a "demented struggle to break even or face debt."
Watch the interview in full with Bello below.
Bassist Frank Bello elaborated on the context of the cancellation, which the band announced via Facebook on August 31, in a new interview with TotalRock's Neil Jones.
"When I saw the numbers, they were literally triple what they originally started at," Bello said of the cost estimates for the European dates. "We would be coming home at such a loss. You don't mind a little bit of a loss just to play to the fans, but such a loss — we would have been really bad off for a while. So it didn't make sense."
Jones proceeded to ask if a "Brexit thing" was actually behind Anthrax cancelling, Bello responded, "It's a human thing at this point, My God."
He added, "I mean, it's a budgetary thing," continuing, "After COVID, when everything went crazy, money-wise, financially it wasn't feasible to do it anymore. When [we] looked at it, we said, 'All right. There's better times ahead.' And that's the way to look at it now. Look, heating costs and everybody's gotta put food on the table. I get it right now. So it's just a really hard time for everybody."
Anthrax are among the likes of Animal Collective, Santigold, Metronomy and more artists who have cancelled tours due to budgetary constraints in the economic reality of 2022 touring, which Lorde recently described as a "demented struggle to break even or face debt."
Watch the interview in full with Bello below.