Very Bad News: Meshuggah Postpone Late 2021 Tour to Spring 2022
The dozens of tour announcements here in the U.S. over the past couple of weeks have been overwhelming. Overwhelming in a good way, of course; with vaccination rates quickly approaching 70% of eligible people (52% of the full population) and states and cities everywhere opening up to full capacity, this thing is HAPPENING! Fall is going to feel somewhat normal, and the glut of tours is going to be an embarrassment of riches.
Unfortunately things are not going quite as well for our friends in Europe. The vaccination campaign in much of the continent got off to a sluggish start, and while many countries have since made great strides, they’re still a couple of months behind the U.S. Here is a chart showing vaccination rates of the total population in some key countries as of today, June 9, sourced from OurWorldinData.org:
Now Meshuggah, not confident enough that vaccination rates and local regulations will be where they need to be by the time their tour was scheduled to start in November, have pushed things off to May 2022. The tour was already rescheduled once before.
That’s a huge “yikes” moment: November is still five months away. There is time! Why the need to pull out so soon? In five months of the U.S. vaccination campaign we went from basically zero to where we are now, and Europe is already way farther along than zero! Seems a bit premature to me. But nevertheless, other bands with tours scheduled in Europe for that time period are all reading this news and saying “oh, shit.”
There could be other considerations, of course, such as needing to wrap up recording their next album, or production delays in putting it out (they were in the studio as of March). But the band’s statement makes no mention of those things:
“Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty that all regions in Europe will be able to restore and provide a safe environment for concerts this autumn, Meshuggah have unfortunately had to make the decision to push back their European headline tour dates to May 2022.
“The good news is that special guests Zeal & Ardor will still be part of the tour and will also be added to the line up for the Royal Albert Hall show in London, and that additional shows in Dublin, Cologne and Nancy have now been added to the routing. Ruhrpott Metal Meeting, being a festival with fixed dates, cannot be rescheduled.”
I’ll say it again: big yikes. I have to trust they’re acting on specific, trusted information from reliable sources that certain countries just simply aren’t going to be ready by November.
We’ll have to wait to see how things shake out for the rest of the touring world in Europe. In the meantime, here are those rescheduled Meshuggah dates:
May 05 Hamburg EOA GER
May 06 Leipzig Haus Auensee GER
May 08 Cologne Palladium GER
May 09 Paris L’Olympia FRA
May 10 Milan Alcatraz ITA
May 12 Munich Tonhalle GER
May 13 Lyon Le Transbordeur FRA
May 14 Nancy M’N’M Festival FRA
May 15 Wiesbaden Schlachthof GER
May 17 Berlin Columbiahalle GER
May 18 Tilburg 013 HOL
May 20 Vienna Arena AUS
May 21 Zurich Samsung Hall SWI
May 22 Esch Sur Alzette Rockhal LUX
May 23 Brussels Ancienne Belgique BEL
May 24 Lille L’Aeronef FRA
May 26 Nottingham Rock City, ENG
May 28 Manchester Academy ENG
May 29 Bristol O2 Academy ENG
May 30 Glasgow Barrowlands SCO
Jun 01 Dublin Olympia IRE
Jun 03 London Royal Albert Hall ENG
