Norway's ENSLAVED have issued the following update:

"Enslaved is issuing this statement to regretfully inform that the Excess Of Evil European tour with MARDUK, ENSLAVED, KEEP OF KALESSIN, GOATWHORE, MALECHESH and PANTHEON I this month (May 2007) is cancelled.

We are not entirely informed and convinced as to why the tour is cancelled – we were promised an immediate statement from the touring agency (Metalysee) several days ago, but nothing has arrived. At this point, with few days left for the intended tour start, we could no longer wait and we are issuing this, to be honest, half-informed statement. We are normally booked through Goldstar Music in Norway, let us stress over and over again that this tour and its demise is not their workings, this was a one-off collaboration with another booking agency.

All we know is that the tour is cancelled and that we feel disappointed, bitter and at the same time vengeful. We are disappointed because we looked forward to performing top notch shows, being part of a high class package and meeting the fans, the friends; the scene. Bitter because we were already stretched to the limit to do this tour – we were ready to go out and do minimalist shows, with a session keyboard player (as Herbrand Larsen couldn’t go due to personal reasons. We feel vengeful because we know we will come back and do these shows tenfold stronger. Our booking agent Goldstar has told us they are already working on rescheduling several of the shows this coming autumn.

As always, there will be speculations as to why this happened. Again, we regret to say that this was never really “our” tour so we lack some insight into the “whys” and “whos” and “whens”. We can only state that we were ready to go, no injuries, no imprisonment, no primadonna acts; none of the usual industry clichés. We have heard rumours about why the tour was cancelled, but we choose not to repeat them until an official statement is issued from Metalysee/ Marduk. We hope other sources of information (web boards, forums, magazines) will remain equally patient/ respectful for the official version.

We’ll be back with more info should it appear, along with any eventual re-bookings of these shows.

A heartfelt thank you to all the people being ready for the shows in France, the UK, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Italy, Germany and Austria – we will return."