Westfest NZ clarify Soundwave comments

New Zealand based festival Westfest NZ has taken to social media to clarify earlier comments, which initially implicated the reported state of Soundwave.

A new official statement released this afternoon reads:

"The Earlier statement regarding Australian Soundwave Festival were false. Westfest & ODR are both separate entities to Soundwave and apologize for any and all comments that mislead anyone to believe that we are privy to any information relating to Soundwave or it's operations.

No comment made by ODR, Westfest or it's Promoter/s in relation to soundwave can be regarded as fact and I personally apologize for any confusion caused.

Westfest were unable to contract the artists necessary for the event to be of usual scale . This had nothing to do with Soundwave.

The above statement followed an earlier post (now also amended), which appeared on the company's Facebook page this morning. The original post read:

"Hey everyone. The announcement is coming this evening. Just a heads up that Westfest is a much smaller affair this year and the lineup is not nearly as big as the last 2 years.

As Im sure many of you know, Soundwave is in real financial trouble and has had issues securing many acts at all, meaning we have way less options too.. understandably, acts are sketched about playing Soundwave if they dont know if they are going to get paid.

A few of the Soundwave acts we tried for have decided to do their own NZ shows, and some others just arent able to come here at all.

Its a really hard time to put on any music festival – Soulfest and Echo Festival both got cancelled due to poor ticket sales. We looked at not doing Westfest in 2016 but we figured a smaller show is better than no show! The last 2 Westfests have lost money and this one will as well, but we are aiming to keep this going for the long term and we aren’t quitting now.

The international acts that we do have for this year are awesome, and we have our best local lineup yet, including a surprise reunion. Westfest 16 is going to be a great day in the sun at an awesome venue.

If the lineup isn’t your thing, no worries. Thanks for the support the last 2 years and we hope to see you in 2017. There are plenty of great metal shows coming up so you can still get your live fix. We are still working with a couple more acts so there may be a second announcement yet, but we didnt want to postpone announcing what we have any longer.

Lineup should be out around 8pm. See you guys soon."

The alleged problems with Soundwave administration have again been reported this week, following a detailed article posted by cxmagblog.com. In the news item, the publication writes, "Returning in January with new dates, Soundwave Festival boss AJ Maddah hopes to repay millions to angry production suppliers, venus and bands. The recent collapse of the previous operating company saw 186 creditors unpaid with debts of $25.8 million."