Nile’s India Visit Cancelled

Nile

As if the Metallica fiasco last year wasn’t enough, there’s more bad news for metal fans this year.

 Delhi’s inaugural Summer Blaze Metal Festival scheduled for May 5 has been cancelled owing to visa issues for headlining American metal act Nile. According to organizer Karan Dubey of Dream Rigs Inc, complicated (and confusing) visa procedures eventually resulted in just drummer George Kollias and the tour manager obtaining visas to play in India. With Nile having to cancel their India visit, the Summer Blaze Festival, which was set to feature performances from Demonic Resurrection, Kryptos, 1833 AD and IIIrd Sovereign has also been scrapped. Their Bangalore show on May 6 with Undying Inc, Crypted, Bhayanak Maut and Eccentric Pendulum also stands cancelled.

 Dubey did hold out some hope for Nile fans and metal heads, saying that they are working with the band’s management to try and find a way to bring Nile to India, probably towards the end of the year.

 This is what the band had to say about the cancellation on their Facebook page:

 “We are extremely sad to inform this to our fans in India that our Tour of India has been called off as the visas for 3 of the members were refused today by the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C. 2 people in the travel party were granted the visas in Houston and in Athens, but the rest were not – for reasons that none of us know . The Indian embassy has not cited any reasons for rejection of the visas. It was and is beyond the control of the band, either of the promoters or the artist management. We did all we could to make this happen and tried working on getting the 3 visas for almost a month!  

The promoters – Dream Rigs Entertainment (Delhi) and Obliquity India, Lanyard Entertainment and ARK Events (Bangalore) want all fans to know who have booked tickets “online” that they shall be refunded in full by the respective ticketing companies for Delhi and Bangalore concerts. 

But this is not the end and all of us are going to try to get Nile back to India.”

 For now though, there’s still the Lamb Of God gig in Bangalore on May 26 as well as Bangalore Open Air featuring headliners Iced Earth (USA), Kreator (Germany) as well as local acts Dying Embrace, Kryptos, Eccentric Pendulum, Bevar Sea, 1833 AD and Albatross on June 16.