The financial difficulties of touring have become a hot topic of conversation over the past few weeks. Devin Townsend recently detailed how hard it is to keep tours within a profitable margin and explained why he goes out as an acoustic act, while Dark Funeral guitarist Lord Ahriman explained how venue merch cuts have occasionally cost his band more than they made in any given night (a sentiment echoed by Bad Omens as well).
Now Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares has weighed in with his own gripes about touring. In a response to the Lord Ahriman story on Metal Injection, Cazares revealed Fear Factory will tour in a van in 2023 to try and actually make some money. "That's why this tour we are doing coming up we’ll be in a van, the cost of touring is making it impossible to make any money," he said.
When asked by a fan about his thoughts on merch cuts and the possibility of selling merch outside the venue, Cazares responded "u may need a resellers license to sell outside and the venue owner may still try and tax u cause your selling on his property, he may also call the police cause he knows u probably don't have a license to sell, so to avoid all that u would have to go down the block to sell."
Add in the debacle that is Ticketmaster right now and you've got yourselves a fairly bleak touring landscape for 2023. Or at least that's the picture that artists seem to be painting right now.
