KING 810 banned from Chicago venue due to "excessive use of guns and violent imagery"
KING 810 have been banned from Chicago venue Thalia Hall, according to a post on Roadrunner Records' Instagram and a video on the band's Facebook. See everything below.
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In the Instagram post, Roadrunner Records shares an email concerning KING 810's upcoming event at Chicago's Thalia Hall—what was supposed to be a stop on a December tour supporting Le Petite Mort Or A Conversation With God, the band's latest release.
Because of “phone calls from people in the neighborhood asking why the show is being allowed to happen” and those citing “the band's excessive use of guns and violent imagery,” “defending the show, in the current environment, is becoming more and more difficult,” says the email from a Talent Buyer at Thalia Hall. It continues, “We would like to cancel the event.”
The Talent Buyer mentions that Chicago is “ending 2016 with the highest rate of gun violence” in the city's history. “It does not seem wise to move forward considering the current state of the neighborhood and our position in the community,” the email concludes—ending with, “We are confident that this is the best route to take.”
KING 810 frontman David Gunn has since responded in a video, saying, “We wanted to publicize it, so people understood that it wasn't us canceling.”
Gunn continues, “A lot of times when these types of things happen, we take the blame, and we wanted to let everyone know it was out of our control.
“The gun thing is part of the culture where we're from—it's inherantly part of the band. It's not something that we apologize for or regret or anthing like that. I don't think there was any excessive use of guns, we've never used guns on anyone at shows—had hundreds of shows, and they went off perfectly fine.
“If anyone ever comes through the front door with an automatic rifle, they're not going to be able to kill 150 people at a KING show—they'll probably be shot from the stage. So, the guns aren't going away, and we don't apologize for anything.”
The band have since updated their tour poster:
KING 810 hail from Flint, Michigan and released La Petite—their second studio album—on Sept. 16. Here's Gunn speaking about his band and the record:
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