News : The Murder Capital cancel US and Canada tour due to “unforeseen financial challenges and the ongoing travel uncertainties”

The Murder Capital have been forced to cancel the US and Canadian leg of their tour due to “unforeseen financial challenges” and uncertainty.

The Irish band have been on the road across the UK and Europe recently, celebrating the release of their third album, ‘Blindness’, which arrived in February. They were set to embark on a North American leg of the tour later this autumn, however, in a new update with fans, the five-piece have explained that they have had to scrap all of those dates.

This, they explained, was due to financial struggles and uncertainties around travel. It seems like no replacement dates have been scheduled, and fans who have tickets to the shows should be issued refunds shortly.

“With heavy hearts, we have to cancel our tour this autumn due to unforeseen financial challenges and the ongoing travel uncertainties,” their statement read on social media yesterday (July 1). “This is a bitter pill to swallow. We hope you know how much we wanted to be out there playing these shows for ye all.”

They continued: “Thank you to all our fans that bought tickets, we appreciate your support and can’t wait to come back as soon as the time is right. Sending you all love in these strange times. All our summer shows are on, we look forward to seeing everyone out there.”

Check out the post in full below.

While the band were vague about the uncertainties they are facing that led to the issues with the US tour, this isn’t the first time this year that they have had shows axed at the last minute.

During the European leg of the tour, The Murder Capital had a run of shows set for Germany cancelled due to the fact that their set design included a Palestinian flag, which was draped at the back of their stage. As highlighted by Far Out, the band were set to play at Grenchen – a nightclub in Berlin – but the show was cancelled just hours before they were set to take to the stage.

Instead, the band played an impromptu show in a local park to make up for the event.

As well as that, a show in Cologne was also scrapped due to the Palestinian flag being shown on stage, and frontman James McGovern spoke out to defend the stage design.

“We pulled into Berlin this morning, we had no idea that we weren’t allowed to fly this flag here today,” he said. “We found out early this afternoon. This is from the band’s point of view.”

“We discussed it for an hour at length, what we should do, we came to the decision that we were not going to take the flag off the stage. That was a decision pretty easily made,” he added. “To us, this isn’t just a political statement, it’s a humanitarian statement. We’ve been saying that in interviews for the whole time that we’ve been speaking about it as people. It’s not all about politics, it’s about people who are dying and being slaughtered every day, and that’s happening right now.

“So, for us as a band who has had this flag on their stage for countless shows now, it would be the wrong thing for us to do to take it off the stage just so that the venue is kept happy. We don’t agree with that.”

Germany has strict laws against hate speech and anti-Semitism and Kneecap’s scheduled shows in the country were recently cancelled in the light of their outspoken comments.

The Murder Capital’s upcoming shows still going ahead include the Ebrovisión festival in Spain, which will be held on September 6. They will then pick up their shows again in November, where they will finish the 2025 tour with a slot in Troyes, France on November 22.

NME awarded ‘Blindness’ three stars, noting: “‘Love Of Country’, recorded in a single live take, is a sprawling meditation on the push and pull between patriotism, nationalism and xenophobia, and shows McGovern’s songwriting at its most incisive. If The Murder Capital’s aim was to purge themselves of inertia, then ‘Blindness’ can only be judged as a success.”