Suddenly, the crowd started moving forward, despite the many crowd-control barriers placed between the audience and the stage. The band urged people to move back. Instead, fans started screaming and climbing over each other for air. When it was all over, eight people, all men, were trampled to death and 25 more were injured.

“This is so painful… I think we are all waiting for someone to wake us and say it was just a horrible nightmare,” read a message posted by Pearl Jam on its official Website. “And there are absolutely no words to express our anguish in regard to the parents and loved ones of these precious lives that were lost.”

Pearl Jam canceled its July 2nd and 3rd concerts in Belgium and Holland, respectively.

On Saturday, festival officials were trying to determine what went wrong. An all-day rain had turned the festival grounds into mud by the time Pearl Jam had taken the stage. At midnight, fans started jostling each other in efforts to get closer to the stage. The band told people to move back, and stopped the performance when it didn’t happen.

“People didn’t understand,” said Colleen Gould, 26, of Australia, who escaped the crowd by swinging her elbows. “They thought they were cheering up the crowd.”

Late Saturday the Protestant bishop of Roskilde, Jan Lindhardt, led a commemorative moment of silence at the scene of the tragedy, which was aired live on Danish public radio.

“It was a terrible and tragic accident,” said Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in an earlier televised interview. “It is very difficult to put words on the fact that so many young people have lost their lives in such sinister circumstances.”

While most of the artists scheduled to play Roskilde on Saturday dedicated their sets to the fallen, two acts, Oasis and Pet Shop Boys, refused, claiming that playing would put too much of an emotional strain on the musicians.

In a statement released by representatives of both bands, Oasis and Pet Shop Boys also claimed that security concerns added to their reasons for their cancellations.

“Security arrangements have not changed fundamentally since last night,” read the statement. “And they [Oasis and Pet Shop Boys] are concerned that there could be a repeat of yesterday’s tragedy.”

However, festival officials released their own statement in response to the cancellations, saying that authorities had approved security and that both bands have played in “identical security conditions” at the festival.

Festival officials also said that the cancellations would actually cause more risk for the fans because it would cause them to seek out the smaller stages.