The members of Californian punk band, Total Chaos are currently stranded in Jakarta after getting ripped off by their Malaysian gig promoter, Gudang Records from Shah Alam.
The four-piece band was supposed to perform in Jakarta on 20 March 2016 as part of their tour in Asia.
However, their concert in Jakarta got called off because they couldn’t make it in time as they were allegedly cheated by the promoter, according to the band themselves as stated on their Facebook page.
“We want to apologize and explain why we did not play the show in JAKARTA on Sunday night,” the band wrote in their long statement on Facebook.
“The reason that we did not make the show is because XAINAL from GUDANG RECORDS got us late to catch our flight from SINGAPORE to JAKARTA,” the band continued.
After the band’s performance in Johor Bahru, Malaysia on 19 March, they were supposed to take the flight from Singapore to Jakarta, but the promoter “refused to cross the border from Malaysia to Singapore”, thus causing the band to miss their flight.
The promoter then eventually drove the band members to KLIA – which was a 5-hour journey – to catch a flight there, and the band almost missed their flight there too.
“We arrived in JAKARTA at 8pm, and then we got harassed at the airport by customs police for 1 hour. By the time we got out of the airport, we found out that the show had already finished because the permit expired at 9pm,” the band added.
The band stated that Gudang Records was the reason why they missed their show in Jakarta, and they weren’t even informed that their show was slated at 7.30pm.
“He also stole US$4,000 of the money that we were supposed to use to get our flights back home to the USA from [the] organizers in INDONESIA.”
ATTENTION JAKARTA!!!This is the guy who fuck you over and us over!...
Posted by TOTAL CHAOS on Monday, March 21, 2016
So right now, the band is stuck in Jakarta with no means of going back to America.
However, there are still ways to send them back home.
According to Unite Asia, punk rockers in Indonesia are calling out to people to help donate some cash to the band so that they can afford their flight back to the U.S.
Donations can be made to the PayPal account of Total Chaos lead singer, Rob Chaos at robchaos@msn.com. [Readers are advised to do so at their own discretion and after verifying the authenticity of the transaction details via the band’s Facebook page].
After a bit of digging back via Unite Asia, in 2012 Gudang Records who previously known as Vokill Records had also allegedly ripped off the Swedish black metal band, Dark Funeral, and caused them to be stuck in Kota Kinabalu.
In other related news, back in November last year, Australian metalcore band I Killed the Prom Queen was detained in a Malaysian immigration centre because their promoters (possibly another company) failed to get them proper visas.
(Photo source: Total Chaos' Facebook)