ANTHRAX singer JOEY BELLADONNA has cancelled his upcoming South American tour that was scheduled to begin this week in Argentina.

A statement reads as follows:

"It is with deep sadness and regret that we have to announce the cancellation of my South American tour coming up at the end of this month. I love playing for the fans and the last thing I hate to do is cancel shows and disappoint my fans; without you I would not be able to live my dream as a musician. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control we have to announce the cancellation of the upcoming Belladonna tour of South America.

My team has been hard at work planning this tour with the promoters down in South America since January. With the recent earthquakes that have happened down there, we thought we would have to postpone or cancel the tour, but the promoters all scrambled to find new venues and we did everything we could to make this tour happen.

My staff has been hard at work trying to salvage these tour dates, but were unable to do so. I hope to see you all out on the road this summer when I am in Europe with Anthrax and the few select shows I have with my solo band Belladonna in America. More solo dates will be announced soon.

You can keep up to date on everything I am doing via my website and my MySpace page."

In early May, Anthrax announced the return of Belladonna, who will make his first appearance with the New York thrashers this summer when the band joins METALLICA, SLAYER, and MEGADETH - The Big Four founding bands of the thrash genre - to co-headline a series of Sonisphere Festivals in ten European cities, as well as playing a handful of Anthrax-headlined shows (itinerary is below).

"I am super excited about this," said guitarist Scott Ian. "Joey and the rest of the band came to see me play at a club in New York, I hadn't seen Joey for years, since the end of the reunion tour. Joey taps me on the shoulder, instant big hug, it felt like no time had gone by. The band dynamic is an interesting one - in Anthrax, Joey and I spent so many years of our lives together, we grew up together, we know each other so well, so it was like no time was lost."
"We're going to do these summer shows and gel as a band," explained drummer Charlie Benante, "get comfortable playing with each other again, and the energy from that should go right into making new music."

Immediately following the final Sonisphere festival in early August, the band will fly back to the US and begin writing and rehearsing for a new album that's expected to be out in early 2011.

"We've got an unusual luxury of hindsight," added Ian. "We finished an album a year ago, we've lived with those 12 songs since then, and we can look back on them and see what we really love and what we can make even better, especially with Joey back in the fold."

Added Benante, "There are five or six songs from a year ago that we don't want to change, we love them the way they are, other than having Joey making them his own with his vocals. Then there's another five or six that we may want to rework, and then there are a bunch of other tunes that are still in the early stages, that we want to finish."

Complete dates for Anthrax - with Joey Belladonna on vocals - are as follows:

June

16 - Sonisphere Festival, Warsaw, Poland
18 - Sonisphere Festival, Wil, Switzerland
19 - Sonisphere Festival, Prague, Czech Republic
20 - Arena Wien, Vienna, Austria
22 - Sonisphere Festival, Sofia, Bulgaria
24 - Sonisphere Festival, Athens, Greece
26 - Sonisphere Festival, Bucharest, Romania
27 - Sonisphere Festival, Istanbul, Turkey

July

31 Sonisphere Festival, Knebworth, UK

August

1 - Lokerse Feesten Festival, Lokerse, Belgium
3 - Metropol, Hengelo, Netherlands
5 - B1, Moscow, Russia
7 - Sonisphere Festival, Stockholm, Sweden
8 - Sonisphere Festival, Pori, Finland