It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it is such a shame. Sadly Finnish melodic death metallers Omnium Gatherum were part of a promoter hoax resulting in the band having to cancel their Japan shows.

The band were due to play 3 shows in Japan this week, 2 in Tokyo and 1 in Osaka but unfortunately have uncovered that the promoter organising the event had ‘faked’ the tour ripping off thousands of fans and the support bands, as well as devastating Omnium Gatherum who were excited to bring their show to Japan for the first time. The band released an official statement explaining the hoax, so best leave it straight from the horse’s mouth:

“Hello our Japanese friends, With heavy hearts we are sad to announce that due to unfortunate circumstances and betrayal Omnium Gatherum is forced to cancel the upcoming shows in Japan this week. We have to be honest about this and tell you that the tour organizer Korean guy Do-Su Kim (also known as Jusin & 김도수) and Metal Asia Agency was deceiving everyone else in this event and caused this cancellation. With the heavy breach of contract Do-Su Kim didn’t pay us any of our advance fee that was agreed and supposed to be done even one month ago. But we were still coming to Japan as we really wanted to do these shows and see our fans, but the next thing was that Do-Su Kim ‘paid for our flights’ and last week we noticed that there’s something wrong with the flight reservation too – our flight booking reference number claimed that the flight status is ‘cancelled’ as they hadn’t been paid for. So after many days of email fighting and Do-Su Kim sending us another set of fake flights we’re now in a situation that we have to cancel these shows, as this guy won’t pay our fee nor book us the flights to Japan. He also got the support bands to pay a lot for the promoter for OG support slot, and this was something that we hadn’t heard at all. So we are really hoping for the best that the fans will get the advance ticket money back and the support bands will get their pay-to-play fees back from Metal Asia Agency asap. Now we have heard that Do-Su Kim & Metal Asia Agency have done same kind of betrayals also before, Unisonic was the latest one, just a week or two before…”

“This is really unfortunate and frustrating, as we were so much looking forward to coming back to your beautiful country and seeing our awesome Japanese fans. There’s nothing more we can do at this point, and we want to send our deepest apologies for the bands and our fans. It’s sad to see there are still impostor promoters like Do-Su Kim in the world. Nevertheless, Omnium Gatherum will return to Japan and play you some metal in the future, that is for sure! All the best, Markus & Jukka on behalf of Omnium Gatherum.”

It seems in the age of social media that this happens less these days, but as you can see above it sadly still does happen. Rest assured, promoters like this always get screwed one way or another in the end. We feel for Omnium Gatherum.