Frank Bello Reveals That the Cancelled European Anthrax Tour “Was Three Times” the Original Budget

A couple weeks ago, legendary thrash band Anthrax announced that they were forced to cancel their upcoming European tour because of high travel costs and logistical issues that the band says were completely out of their control.

During a recent interview with Blabbermouth, Anthrax bassist Frank Bello went into further detail as to why their slate of European shows were cancelled, but the U.K. dates were unaffected.

“When was the last time we canceled a European tour? We’ve never done it. The god’s honest truth: Everything budgeting-wise is insane right now. We budgeted it last year and came back to this year with the gas lines and all the shit that’s going on. It was three times the budget. We would have gone into a bad deficit, horrible. And the promoters are saying, ‘It doesn’t make sense for you guys to do it.’ The buses, just life in general. It’s horrible. We were able to salvage the U.K. But people know us. They know we’ll be back. We love it there. I can’t wait to go back. It’s just a bummer that life is in the way of metal. [Laughs] What’s going on in the world is in the way of metal and making people feel good with our music.

“We’ve been away,” he continued. “We just did the Black Label Society and Hatebreed tour and we got the taste back. We were looking forward to the next leg, the U.K., then right into Europe. We’re used to touring a few months at a time. Then our manager comes, ‘We can’t do this with the accounting.’ It’s like, ‘What? How did this happen?’ Then you read the papers and you understand. It’s terrible.”

This isn’t the first time that logistical issues and overbearing costs have derailed a tour in recent months. As costs continue to increase everywhere, touring bands are going to have to make a financial decision as to whether they travel long distances to perform anymore, leaving fans around the world without the means to see their favorite band. And that shit fucking sucks.

Here’s hoping the insanity begins to level out and we can all get back to catching our favorite bands live, regardless of where we live.