Metal Anarchy

Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats have taken to social media to call out Gorillaz for stopping their July 2 set at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. According to the band, “pop diva” Damon Albarn “threw a hissy fit” after taking issue with their “loud” performance.

The group said the following:

“Apologies to everyone who came to Roskilde festival hoping to see us play a full set last night. Pop diva Damon Albarn of the novelty cartoon act Gorillaz threw a hissy fit while we played, threatened to storm off stage before finally getting our set shut down because we were “too loud”. They were the only headliner of the whole weekend who couldn’t cope with playing at the same time as other artists.

Unfortunately we only managed 25 minutes of assaulting his precious ears from our stage half a mile away before his goons came over and pulled the plug. Despite us being below the festival dB limit and offering to turn down FOH to continue the show, they wanted us off.

Thanks to the Roskilde crew and stage manager who tried their best to intervene but it was ultimately out of their hands. Orders from above.

p.s to our Danish fans….we love you and we’ll see you next year in Copenhagen.”

Drummer Jon Rice also issued a statement:

“Apologies to everyone who attended Roskilde Festival with the intentions of watching the full Uncle Acid set last night. We were forced to cut our set short by Gorillaz due to what they called ‘technical difficulties’, when in reality they could faintly hear the sound coming from our stage in between their songs and decided to throw a bitch fit, threatening to pull their gig entirely if we didn’t stop playing. We can’t apologize enough for the premature end of our set but it wasn’t our call to make.

Funnily enough, The Cure (who headlined the festival on a previous day) played at the same time as Monolord and could faintly hear the sound from the same stage we played on, but powered through like professionals. Our Front of House sound engineer was 2db below the festival mandated decibel limit for the entirety of our gig as well, so the ‘we were playing too loud’ excuse doesn’t hold water.

In addition to all of this, Gorillaz put the entire staff organizing Roskilde Festival in a horrible position, firstly having to deliver the news to us that we wouldn’t be able to play the remaining 30 minutes of our set and then having to tell thousands of very agitated fans who paid good money to see ALL of the bands that our set would not continue. They didn’t deserve the very loud ‘SHAME ON YOU’ chant the crowd leaned into when receiving the final verdict, but Gorillaz sure as fuck do.”

Despite this, organizers claim the cancellation was caused by “wind conditions and technical factors”:

“Strong winds are expected to continue throughout the day. To reduce the risk of further disruptions and provide the best possible experience for both festivalgoers and artists, we’ve made a number of changes to today’s programme.

The decision follows yesterday’s Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats show at Lagune, which we unfortunately had to stop. We know this was disappointing for everyone involved, and we’re sorry that both festivalgoers and the artists missed out on the experience they had been looking forward to.

The interruption was caused by a combination of wind conditions and technical factors that affected the sound production. When hosting a large outdoor live event, changing weather conditions can sometimes create operational challenges.”