Jason Newsted May or May Not Have Cancelled His Australian Tour

Well, this story has just about reached Mel Brooks proportions of ridiculousness.

As you probably recall, a couple of weeks ago, the organizers of Australia’s Soundwave Festival (like Ozzfest or Mayhem Fest, it’s really a tour) announced that Jason Newsted had been dropped from the bill at the request of Megadeth, and would be replaced by Whitechapel. Dave Mustaine’s reps, of course, vigorously denied that they had made any such request, and subsequently cancelled their own appearance at Soundwave pending an apology from the fest’s organizers. Newsted, meanwhile, made plans to go to Australia anyway, only with Testament instead of Megadeth.

And now, according to Faster Louder, it looks like Newsted may not be going Down Under, either:

“Jason Newsted has cancelled all of his February and March dates. It means the former Metallica bassist and his eponymous band have become the seventh act to drop out of the 2014 Soundwave festival tour.”

BUT WAIT! It gets weirder still: the Facebook post on which Newsted made this announcement has now been taken down, and Soundwave founder AJ Maddah says that “Newsted’s equipment has already arrived in Brisbane,” where the tour kicks off on February 22 — but attempts to contact Newsted to find out what the dilly with the Facebook post have thus far been unsuccessful. Maddah had previously alleged that Mustaine wasn’t responding to his direct attempts at communication, either. Dude organized the biggest tour in Australia, and no one will return his phone calls. Hm.

And on top of all of this, earlier this week, Whitechapel announced that they, too, had to pull out of Soundwave, “due to the death of an immediate family member.” Which is just a very sad and unfortunate coincidence.

But still. It seems like this year’s Soundwave is cursed. SEVEN bands have dropped off this thing. Can you imagine if seven bands dropped off of Mayhem Fest one or two weeks before it began? Fuck, seven bands pulling out of MDF at the last minute would seem suspicious. What the hell is going on here? I’m beyond curious to see what happens next.

We’ll update this story as soon as someone figures out whether or not