Organizers of Germany's Up From The Ground festival have issued the following statement:

"The gossip factory is working overtime. Last week news messages were growing about a cancellation of Up From The Ground festival in 2008. Unfortunately we need to confirm this statement in this instance.

After 7 successful Up From The Ground festivals in 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 as well as our personally masterpiece in 2007 based on the number of visitors, organisation and feedback from metal press and of course the fans it will be no sequel in 2008 in Gemünden.

There are many more or less serious reasons for this heavy decision. One of the most important was the realisation regarding the hazardous festival area. At this place it wouldn't be possible to enforce this kind of event, if the god of weather would act without mercy. After a almost wet and cold summer in 2007 we were in the happy position of 2 weeks in front of the festival nearly without rain and lot of sunshine. The festival area was nearly sold out and it was easy to reconstruct what would happen if we would not have that strong luck. The disadvantages of the beautiful but trappy area like e. g.

- no option to extend cost saving
- only one unsuitable vehicle access
- no water and drain connection
- no power

only to name but a few, weight to heavy to ignore.

The invested time, work is not in keeping with the high risk. The UFTG festival was growing oversized for a hobby but still to small to take care of it as a full time job.

You could imagine it was a hard decision. Especially after this overcoming feedback regarding the last issue. Many thanks to all our partners, the community Gemünden, the bands, the relentless hands and helpers and last but not least the you, the fans for 7 incomperable, peaceful extreme metal festivals in Gemünden!

The future is not exactely planned so far. Besides regular indoor events (e. g. upcoming Obituary/Holy Moses/Avatar, Thrash Assault festival #2) we have different ideas to carry forward the Up From The Ground concept. But that's not defined yet. Of course we'll hold this webpage to keep you updated. Stay tuned!

To be continued..."