Soundwave’s AJ Maddah Defends Legion Festival Following Its Cancellation

Upstart heavy metal festival Legion was officially cancelled yesterday, and the news undoubtedly left a lot of Soundwave Festival fans feeling, well…

And now AJ Maddah, the boss of Soundwave — which itself was cancelled permanently less than a year ago — has come out in support of Legion Festival, which has been copping flack from punters online.

“I don’t understand people shitting on [Legion],” Maddah has tweeted. “They tried to make something happen. It didn’t work. At least they had a go.”

Legion organisers were forced to pull the plug on their inaugural heavy metal event — which had booked performances from the likes of Lordi, Front Line Assembly and Aversions Crown — citing “a number of business considerations”.

“Due to a number of business considerations, we have made the decision to not proceed with the proposed launch of Legion Music Fest in January 2017,” promoters told Music Feeds. “The organisers thank all Aussie metal fans for their continued support.”

While we don’t quite know what the nature of these “business considerations” are, according to another source from inside the Legion camp who wishes to remain anonymous, the move “may be due to Legion organisers working on a rumoured international venture late in 2017”. It’s probably not Knotfest or Download Festival, but something might be in the works.

Meanwhile, Maddah himself has previously stated that he’d support a resurrection of Soundwave or the Aussie Warped Tour if someone had “deep pockets”.

“I’d love to think [the events could come back],” he said earlier this year. “Will require someone with deep pockets. I’ll support in any way I can.”

The 2017 cancellation of Legion Fest comes after the originally crowd-funded event was already pushed forward by a year.

As the festival has never charged those who originally pledged the $360,735 to its initial campaign, or put tickets on sale, no refunds are necessary.

“No transactions have been processed at all and no fans are out of pocket,” Legion organisers have posted on Facebook. “[We] wish to thank all Aussie metal fans for their continued support of the Legion project over the last 10 months.”

Catch Maddah’s tweet in defence of Legion Festival, below.