An Open Letter to the U.S. State Department, on Behalf of Obscura
To Whom it May Concern at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs,
I just read on Metal Underground that Obscura, one of the foremost tech death bands in the world today, have to drop off this year’s MetalSucks-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour due to visa issues. The band explained the unfortunate situation via Facebook:
Obscura won’t be able to participate in this year’s Summer Slaughter due to visa issues. We started the visa process in April a few days after we confirmed the tour but it seems that US Immigration is a lottery to get a visa in time or not.
We lost all of our flights, our gear is in Los Angeles, our US crew lost their job for a whole month and the 3000 US$ we paid for visas are non-refundable. In total Obscura lost 15000 US$ with this stunt to be straight. This is an existential amount of money for a band of this size. And personally, I face this situation a second time after 2012’s Death DTA disaster.
We have been prepared, hired a professional agency to have all visas been applied for correctly and in time – starting in April. The immigration failed to file a necessary I-797 form (the final work permission) from June 3rd – this takes up to two weeks according to their official information but they did not even started at this point, so we won’t get an estimate when we can pick up our passports/visas. To clarify, if we would try to get into the country with a tourist visa or without a visa at all the band will get deported on our own costs and get banned from the United States for 10 years.
If we jump on the tour at a later point we will lose even more money since all of our gear, production and breakables arrived in Los Angeles two weeks ago. Also booking flights a second time costs us another 8000 US$. Our coach is based in Los Angeles and paying 1000 US$ per day until we finally would be able to enter the country would ruin the band completely.
It is a bitter, frustrating situation we, our loyal fan base and all promoters and agents have to face right now. We won’t give up and we will come back to the United States, but we have to drop off Summer Slaughter 2015.
Sincerely,
Steffen Kummerer
Unfortunately, Obscura’s story is an all-too-common one these days. If a foreign band announces plans to tour the United States, there’s basically a 50/50 chance that they’ll ever actually make it. And while it’s possible that all of these bands are just full of/run by flakes — it’s no secret that musicians can be kinda flighty — it seems statistically unlikely. In other words: that this has become such a common problem is all your fault.
This being the case, on the (unsolicited) behalf of metal fans throughout the United States and metal musicians across the world, I would like to kindly make a suggestion:
CUT IT THE FUCK OUT.
I know, I know, you get scores of applications for temporary work visas all the time, and you’re just doing your job, trying to keep us safe, blah blah blah blah. But two things:
- There has not been a single recorded act of terrorism by a heavy metal. I know they look like miscreants and scream like monsters, but honestly, most of them are full of nerds. They are, in other words, harmless. (Except for Sonic Syndicate. Their music could certainly be declared an act of terrorism. You can keep those idiots out of the country for as long as you want.)
- Given how frequently this kind of thing happens, you are clearly terrible at your job anyway, so just stop trying and given the bands their goddamned visas.
I have no other way in which to incentivize you, so I shall conclude this letter by appealing to whatever sense of basic human decency you may have left in your cold, bleak, bureaucratic soul: how would you like it if Celine Dion suddenly couldn’t get into the country, and you had no way of seeing her perform “I’m Your Lady” live? It would hurt, right? Right. So, again, please, I beg you, from the bottom of my heart and the hearts of metal fans all around the planet:
CUT IT THE FUCK OUT.
Sincerely,
Double-Jew Axl Rosenberg, Esq.
Obscura fans can mourn while listening to this playlist curated by Steffen Kummerer, which he made for MetalSucks before this heinous shit went down.
Summer Slaughter kicks off tonight! Even without Obscura and, sadly, After the Burial, it still has an incredible line-up, which includes Arch Enemy, Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, The Acacia Strain, Cattle Decapitation, and Beyond Creation. Get dates here.
