Dominion Festival, a three-day, 5,000-capacity heavy metal and hard rock event, has been called off due to only 5% of tickets having been sold with just weeks to go.

Organised by Wannasee Promotions, the event was due to take place on 5-7 May at Ushaw Historic House, Chapels and Gardens, in County Durham, with a line-up including Skindred, Blind Guardian and Orange Goblin.

The festival had been rescheduled from its original launch date in July last year. At the time, Wannasee Promotions operations director Alex Hutchinson told Access that he planned for the event to be the premier festival for metal, heavy metal and hard rock in the North of England.

The event’s organisers have issued a statement in which they said they were heartbroken to cancel the festival but had no choice as going ahead would have led to losses amounting to more than £250,000.

The statement reads, “The only ethical decision that could possibly be made now is to accept defeat, gut wrenching though this is. We tried everything and committed all we had, but pushing this any further forward would risk us joining the pile of promoters who have failed to refund customers after using ticket money to fund a failed show, or not paid bands or suppliers for the show – neither of which is something that we could entertain.”

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