Rock & Metal Circus Festival cancelled due to venue problems

Photo: WENN

This year's Rock & Metal Circus Festival has been cancelled due to problems with the venue.

The festival, which was in its second year, was due to take place in Northamptonshire between 12 and 14 September. Acts such as Voodoo Six, Triaxis, Incassum and Second Rate Angels were on the bill.

A statement from the festival this morning however, revealed that it will no longer be taking place: "It is with deepest regret that we confirm the cancellation of Rock and Metal Circus 2014. We appreciate that this causes a major inconvenience for fans, bands, promoters, stalls and other people involved, and sincerely apologise for this."

This is the latest in a string of young festivals to bite the dust this year, following on from Alt-Fest, Another World, Oxegen and Jabberwocky.

The organisers of Rock & Metal Circus are keen to point out that this cancellation, unlike others, was not due to money problems. "The reason for the decision to cancel was connected to venue problems. We found out very recently that the person responsible for paying the deposit to Sywell had failed to do so (despite informing us that it had been sorted out)."

Anyone who bought tickets will be given their money back, but the organisers have not yet released details on how to claim this refund.

The full, very long, statement is below.

It is with deepest regret that we confirm the cancellation of Rock and Metal Circus 2014. We appreciate that this causes a major inconvenience for fans, bands, promoters, stalls and other people involved, and sincerely apologise for this.

Please understand that this decision was not taken lightly and attempts were made to save this year's festival. In order to try put rumours to rest and give you an explanation as to why the decision to cancel was taken, we will try to explain in this statement.

Sam out of contact

Firstly, apologies for those of you who have been trying to get ahold of Sam. He is not trying to avoid or ignore anyone, but unfortunately has a major family crisis going on this week which is taking his full attention. Please be understanding toward this and allow him this space until he is able to get in contact with people and feel free to contact Paul or Owen with any questions you have about Rock and Metal Circus and it's cancellation.

Reason for cancellation

Our desire with Rock and Metal Circus was to help promote Rock and Metal music, providing an awesome line-up of bands for fans to enjoy. We also wanted to do this at low cost and have done everything along the way to keep prices down for the fans.

There has been some speculation that we cancelled due to financial reasons. Please understand that this was not the case. Although we have had a major sponsor let us down, we had every intention of covering this cost personally.

The reason for the decision to cancel was connected to venue problems. We found out very recently that the person responsible for paying the deposit to Sywell had failed to do so (despite informing us that it had been sorted out). Sywell then booked another event at the venue, which we would not have found out about had we not contacted them to discuss some other things regarding setup, sound etc.

We immediately set out to find an alternative venue at very short notice. Unfortunately potential venues were either already booked up, or did not have the necessary licensing. This included looking into the possibility of using a field for the festival. As licenses can take up to 8 weeks to get approved, we felt it better to cancel and inform people so that they had sufficient notice to get refunds etc from hotels if they had booked these.

There was the option of applying for an emergency license, however with no guarantees that this would get approved in time we felt that we did not want to keep people hanging until the last minute. Applying for an emergency license would have meant that if it had not worked out, we would have had to cancel days before the festival which would have caused a much greater inconvenience for fans, bands, promoters, stalls etc. Taking the decision now meant we could give people about 21 days notice.

Smaller event.

Some people have asked whether we may be able to do a smaller event. We are looking into this possibility, however can not make any immediate promises that we will be able to pull one together in time.

Ticket refunds

As we have already stated, all tickets will be refunded. Due to getting this statement out as quick as possible, we are still putting together the necessary information as to how this will be done, so we would appreciate if you can be patient while waiting for more information on refunds. We will release this as soon as possible.

Again, we sincerely apologise to everyone for the cancellation of Rock and Metal Circus 2014. Bands work hard to get their music out there and provide us with music we love to enjoy. We encourage you all to support live music and will continue to do so ourselves.

We will continue to provide you with more information as we can, including information about future festivals and gigs which we organise.

Thank you for your understanding,

Paul and Owen, on behalf of Sam

The Rock and Metal Circus Team."

Below: The festivals that were cancelled or disappeared forever