US metallers WHILE HEAVEN WEPT have issued the following update from Tom Phillips (guitar, keyboards, vocals):

"It is with deep regret that we announce the cancellation of our appearances at Metalcamp 2010 as well as the Born To Be Doomed festival in Baltimore this year.

Cancelling any show is very difficult for us emotionally and spiritually... those of you who have been with us for a while know that we've even brought in stand-in musicians to make things happen in the past, but unfortunately, sometimes things simply don't work out no matter what we do.

Regarding Metalcamp, extenuating circumstances that neither the Metalcamp organization nor WHW ourselves could resolve... despite exhausting every last possibility... have resulted in WHW being cancelled from the billing for this year. Part of this can be attributed to conflicting schedules, along with truly outrageous expenses, and a few other personal matters that we'll make public when appropriate (don't worry, they're not malign). The bottom line is we hope that we'll be able to reschedule for Metalcamp 2011 (or after), and will let you know if and when this is sorted out.

As far as the Born To Be Doomed festival the week prior, just this morning I received a phone call regarding a major conflict for one of the WHW members with their job that has come up affecting the first week of July. This of course was gutting news as we were looking forward to this event as much as Metalcamp, but the reality is we don't make a living doing WHW, and when the "powers that be" demand one of us elsewhere... in terms of career or family, sometimes there's no negotiating a way around it. We felt it was very important to get this information out ASAP so that John and Josh of the DOBD team have plenty of time to find another band to fill our slot.

Again, we extend our deepest apologies to our friends and fans for these disheartening cancellations, and will do our best to reschedule dates at another time.

FORTUNATELY, there is some good news that I can tell you about, that will perhaps assuage these sad announcements... behind the scenes, we've been working hard on an EU tour plan for later in 2010, and hopefully we'll be able to make a very exciting announcement regarding this soon.

The 'Vessel' 7" will be in production shortly, and we'll next move on to the 'Lovesongs Of The Forsaken' 12" release as previously discussed.

We have also already started to demo the material for the Fear Of Infinity album and hope to have a complete representation in hand within the next 6 weeks."

Stay tuned for further updates. More on the band at this location.