In a slap in the face to Australian fans, Coheed And Cambria have announced that they will be pulling out of Soundwave festival in order to tour the U.S. with Linkin Park.

The band released a statement which read, in part:

"Linkin Park has personally invited us to support them in the US during this time and after a lot of thought, we have accepted. While this is good news for us and our fans in the US, we realize it is a blow to you down under and in mainland Europe, and we apologize for any inconvenience this will cause."

As a consolation prize they've promised they "will instead come to [Australian] shores at the end of March to play our own theater shows", although nothing concrete has been announced.

An organiser of Soundwave posted a message on the festival's message board, insisting that they didn't do it for the money:

"For the record, they were getting paid more from [Soundwave] than they are from Linkin Park.

I suspect they are doing this stadium tour because their label and publisher demanded it and if the band did not do this they would have found their new album fall off the priority list.

In any case, as is our policy at SW, we will always strive to replace any drop-out with a band of bigger or simillar stature. Sometimes, of course, it is impossible to get a carbon copy, but in terms of quality, we will always strive to match or exceed."