Rivers of Nihil cancel their tour in Japan – and drama ensues with the promoter

Rivers of Nihil have unfortunately canceled their scheduled tour in Japan this August due to problems with their visas, as per theprp. Theuncertainty surrounding their involvement in the four-show series with Psycroptic, The Zenith Passage, and others has become a point of disagreement after a vague message from the tour promoter, Soundworks Direct Japan. Rivers of Nihil have replied to this situation as well. Their statement led to a response from Fallujah, who shared their ownexperiences with the same promoter while touring in Japan for the first time this year.

It is with extreme regret we must announce that we will be unable to make our planned tour of Japan in August. We were unable to obtain the necessary Japanese visas in time for the tour. While the promoter shared a post painting us as some kind of law-dodging criminals, the truth is that the process of applying for Japanese visas is extremely unruly and difficult, which was not clearly communicated to us until it was far too late, and our many other international touring commitments this year made it impossible to complete the process in time. We were forced to drop off the tour specifically BECAUSE we wanted to make sure we followed all applicable Japanese laws, not because we attempted to dodge them.

To our Japanese fans, we are very sorry, as we were greatly looking forward to this tour! We will make it to Japan one day, we promise. On a final note, please go see our friends in The Zenith Passage and Psycroptic, as they are still able to play these shows.

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Just saw the post. If this promoter wants to slam you guys for breaking contracts, then maybe we can talk about the fact that he refused to pay us our contracted guarantees for the shows we did there in June

Said the ‘flights were too expensive’, but didn’t mention anything about voiding our payouts when the flights were being booked back in April. Instead he waited until a month after the tour to reply and tell us we’re not getting paid.

We weren’t going to say anything publicly, but if they’re ‘announcing warnings to promoters around the world’ or whatever, then I guess we’ve got one for the bands too