Earlier this week, members of the Norwegian black metal group Mayhem were arrested on charges that they had trashed a hotel room in Holland. According to reports, the can caused $7,800 Canadian in damages, and would not be released from jail until they coughed up the cash. Now, an official statement has been released from the band partially explaining what went down.
In a statement posted on Rock Radio, Mayhem front-man Attila Csihar explained the situation, saying that the band had been conned out of advance money from a shady promoter and, driven by stress, acted out in a drunken rage, destroying the hotel room. It's not exactly the best excuse, but Csihar himself admits that his band-mates' behaviour was stupid.
Here's the full statement from Csihar:
I wasn't involved so I wasn't arrested. But what happened is that the 18-year-old promoter disappeared with our £2500 advance a couple of days before the first show of the tour.
That's the problem with the Internet - anyone can act like a booking agent. He continually lied, saying everything was booked. But we found out at the end we had no flights and nothing had been organized except promotion at the local clubs and sales of hundreds of tickets in advance.
We decided to play the tour to be loyal to the fans and promoters, who were freaking out too, of course. So we booked our own flights, local transport and backline the day before the tour started.
I thought we were cool - but you can imagine the stress we were under. You can imagine it wasn't the best tour of our lives, but we managed to play good shows and make the best out of it, even though we had to swallow a lot of crap.
On the night after the last show the guys got drunk and exploded. It was a really bad hotel - we didn't even have toilets in the room. And actually, it wasn't only Mayhem involved because some of the local crew did it too.
I agree it was stupid, of course. But what could I do? I hope everyone learned a lesson, and it makes a bit more sense.
If there's one thing to learn from this story, it's that shady promoters are a common strain throughout the music industry. We're sure the hotel staff would agree, however, that it doesn't exactly warrant a drunken room thrashing.
In a statement posted on Rock Radio, Mayhem front-man Attila Csihar explained the situation, saying that the band had been conned out of advance money from a shady promoter and, driven by stress, acted out in a drunken rage, destroying the hotel room. It's not exactly the best excuse, but Csihar himself admits that his band-mates' behaviour was stupid.
Here's the full statement from Csihar:
I wasn't involved so I wasn't arrested. But what happened is that the 18-year-old promoter disappeared with our £2500 advance a couple of days before the first show of the tour.
That's the problem with the Internet - anyone can act like a booking agent. He continually lied, saying everything was booked. But we found out at the end we had no flights and nothing had been organized except promotion at the local clubs and sales of hundreds of tickets in advance.
We decided to play the tour to be loyal to the fans and promoters, who were freaking out too, of course. So we booked our own flights, local transport and backline the day before the tour started.
I thought we were cool - but you can imagine the stress we were under. You can imagine it wasn't the best tour of our lives, but we managed to play good shows and make the best out of it, even though we had to swallow a lot of crap.
On the night after the last show the guys got drunk and exploded. It was a really bad hotel - we didn't even have toilets in the room. And actually, it wasn't only Mayhem involved because some of the local crew did it too.
I agree it was stupid, of course. But what could I do? I hope everyone learned a lesson, and it makes a bit more sense.
If there's one thing to learn from this story, it's that shady promoters are a common strain throughout the music industry. We're sure the hotel staff would agree, however, that it doesn't exactly warrant a drunken room thrashing.