Cabal attributes Summer Slaughter’s disappointment to unfulfilled expectations and angry posts on social media.

Bassist Dennis Jovcevski Hursid and vocalist Andreas Bjulver of Cabal were guests on the Garza Podcast, which is hosted by Suicide Silence guitarist Christ Garza. During the broadcast, the topic of summer touring was discussed. Hursid stated that while some of the shows were fantastic, several didn’t even come close to meeting expectations, which is a credit to Summer Slaughter.

We played a lot of fun shows, but we played some boring shows as well. I’m not gonna lie. Ticket sales, sometimes. We just played big rooms, like 1200 caps for 150 people.

According to Bjulver, a portion of the ticket sales problem may have stemmed from the roster, as some fans would have anticipated seeing the classic Summer Slaughter lineup, which included death metal heavyweights like Morbid Angel, Dying Fetus, Goatwhore, and Cattle Decapitation. Rather, Veil of Maya and Brand of Sacrifice shared the bill for the majority of the dates this year, though not all of them. The remaining days featured Gideon, Left To Suffer, Ten56, Tallah, Cabal, and Brat. Ash Avildsen, the owner of the festival, had a major breakdown after Metal Sucks brought attention to that problem. But that might have been a major factor in why things didn’t go as planned, according to Bjulver.

I remember back in the days, looking at the lineups when I was a teen and there would always be a mix of death metal and then metalcore and deathcore. This year they kind of switched and just did death metal. We had Brand [of Sacrifice] who are death grind, kind of, but besides that it is really centered on more modern core. I like all the bands on it, but I think that some of the OG bands were really pissed about it.

Following Metal Sucks’s original piece comparing this year’s lineup to past ones, Avildsen took to the tour’s official Instagram page to take aim at them. In the post, he mentioned:

regardless if we booked cannibal and fetus or resurrected necrophagist and cynic, you’re still a bunch of pro vaccine mandate brainwashed pharma cuck sheep bootlickers. have a good day and bow to your publicly traded owner, posers

Then there was also the rant. I don’t know if you caught that. So the page on Summer Slaughter, the person who controlled the page went on a rant. Bjulver

On an Instagram photo, they wrote about all the backlash. And then he dropped the comments basically calling all the people pussies, like Fauci pussies and basically went on an anti-vax rant. Hursid

Regretfully, the band had already committed to the festival by the time all that nonsense happened. Even still, Bjulver claimed they were aware that Avildsen’s immature outburst would be detrimental to the company’s bottom line.

We had already accepted the tour and we saw that and were like, ‘Oh no,’. You can do that as a private person. No problem. But when you’re doing that and you’re speaking on behalf of the entire tour … And also, when you’re trying to sell a product, you shouldn’t antagonize your potential buyers. And that’s kind of like what happened. We were like, ‘Oh no.’