We should have known it wouldn't last.

Australia has seen the mother of all golden runs in the past couple of years as far as touring international bands are concerned.

Tool. John Petrucci with G3. Converge. Arcturus' last tour ever. Isis. Mono. Pelican. Evergrey. Mike Patton's Peeping Tom. Guns N' Roses. Regina Spektor. Blonde Redhead. Against Me! Iron Maiden. The Police. The re-formed Rage Against The Machine. Heaven And Hell. Zappa Plays Zappa. Circa Survive. Sigur Ros. Queensryche. Roger Waters. Tori Amos. Explosions In The Sky. Minus The Bear.

And of course, Dream Theater.

And those are just the ones that I'm personally interested in.

Artists of all genres have finally added Australia to their standard tour itinerary, and it's about damn time. We suffered through decades of being seen as the arse hole of the world, a place that bands wouldn't touch, but things finally seemed to be turning around.

The good times continued recently with the announcement of Soundwave festival, with an incredible line-up of international progressive, punk and hardcore bands. Incubus, mewithoutYou, Saosin, Mindless Self Indulgence... the line-up was a thing of beauty. But the jewel in the crown for me and many other Aussie fans was one of the premier bands in the progressive world today: Coheed And Cambria.

Sure, they've been here before. But I missed them last time because - don't laugh - I already had tickets to see Kanye West (and incidentally, Kanye kicked ass, so it was money well spent). This year - finally! - I would get my chance to see Coheed as I have always wanted.

But then the announcement came. They had chosen to ditch Australia to tour the U.S. with Linkin Park, and were pulling out of Soundwave.

I was pissed.

This wasn't some behind-the-scenes jockeying for the services of a well-known band, away from the anticipatory eyes of the general public. No, they had already been announced for Soundwave. They were on the posters. They were on the website. Message boards had lit up with joy at their presence on the bill.

But that didn't matter because they'd been offered a spot supporting a pop-metal band playing to billions of people in America.

Hearts were broken. Tickets were placed on eBay because "the only band worth seeing aren't on the bill any more". The replacement was Alexisonfire - a fine band, if you're into that kind of music, but they're no Coheed.

All I could think was "why?"

Why would a band slap every Australian fan in the face by saying, essentially, "we got a better offer, so we're out of here"?

Apparently, it wasn't the money. A Soundwave organiser assured punters that Coheed would have made more from playing Soundwave than they were getting from the Linkin Park tour. He suspects that record label pressures were the driving force behind the change of heart, but if that was the case, we were owed a little more explanation than what we got.

Whatever the real reason was, Coheed have assured us that they will make amends by returning to Australia later in the year playing their own headlining tour - but no dates have been announced as yet. You never know, maybe Britney will invite them onto her comeback tour and they'll fuck off their long-suffering and passionate Aussie fans once again to make another quick buck and get mountains of exposure.

I have to admit I am still a Coheed fan and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this is definitely bad for their reputation in Australia. Let's hope that March theatre tour goes ahead, for their sake and ours.