Legion Festival To Go Ahead

Legion was the brainchild of Devil You Know’s John Sankey and Australian promoters Mark Spillane and Kristie Lawrence (who were not involved in Soundwave), and initially to take place January 2016.

However, due to insufficient preparation time, the festival’s debut was postponed to 2017. An ambitious crowd-sourcing campaign to raise A$3.2 million ($2.4 million) made only A$363,975 ($291,114).

Sankey says the campaign is abandoned, but other funding will be sourced to ensure the festival will go ahead. He said, “Given that it took longer than anticipated to lock in a headline act, along with a number of other external forces going on in the industry at the moment, we realized that, even though these issues made it very difficult for us to reach our goal in time, the campaign support had given us all the leverage necessary to move forward and fund and confirm the festival.”

Legion will stage in January 2017 in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane with smaller club versions in Perth and Adelaide. Headliners are still to be confirmed, but international and Australian acts confirmed include Lordi, Devil Driver, Frontline Assembly, Devil You Know, Darkest Hour, Battle Cross, Capture The Crown, Dream on Dreamer, Aversions Crown, Polaris, Heard of Cows?, 28 Day, Caligula’s Horse, Darkc3ll and Rick Dangerous and the Silkie Bantams.

Legion brought aboard event partners including ticketing agency Oztix, Global Event Management, TV, music and movie producers Unbreakable International, merchandise and tour company Love Police, social media agency Jaden Social and hard rock publicity and tour companies Bulletproof/Riot Entertainment.

Meanwhile, fallout from Soundwave continues. After a public argument between promoter AJ Maddah and ticketing agency Eventopia as to who was responsible for ticket refunds, Eventopia returned the money to avoid inconveniencing customers, GM Martin Curnow said.

But legal action may be taken against Maddah. “Eventopia is investigating all possible courses of action against AJ Maddah and his companies,” Curnow said in an email to The Music Network.