Australia Not Yet Included In At The Drive-In's 2016 World Tour Plans

UPDATE, 13/04/16: At The Drive-In have been announced on the 2016 Splendour In The Grass line-up. They came through, the beautiful bastards. Sideshows, we await your announcement.

Following the reposting of an image found in the depths of At The Drive-In's website confirming "new music and [a] world tour" for 2016, several media outlets yesterday breathlessly trumpeted the verified return of the Texan post-hardcore pioneers — but the devil's in the details, and the details are kind of disappointing (as somewhat expected).

The band have since made good on their promise of an announcement regarding their plans for 2016, elaborating on the information contained in the widely recirculated photo (since removed from their website, probably because everyone ruined their planned surprise) with a series of world tour dates that don't include Australia.

With the tour kicking off on 23 March, in Los Angeles, before seeing the band jet through Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Spain before returning to the US from 15 May, when they kick off the home-country leg of their sojourn at Atlanta's Shaky Knees Festival, it's hard to imagine that Australians will get a look in; at any rate, we certainly don't seem to be on their radar at this point.

However, one potential positive for die-hard fans is that the world tour wraps up in Toronto, Canada, on 23 June — meaning their schedule frees up just in time for something like, oh, say, Splendour In The Grass. So, it's not totally out of the realm of possibility (hell, it might even be likely) that we'll end up getting a visit from At The Drive In in 2016 after all — but it's certainly not on any official-looking cards at the moment. Either way, frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala seems confident that they'll make it everywhere they're wanted in the long run:

If nothing else, at least we're guaranteed a new full-length from the Relationship Of Command scribes this year (though, according to Fuse, there's no set date for its release yet) and, with the complete original roster of the band confirmed to be on board for their return, we're not extinguished of hope that we could be in for an unexpectedly invigorated and un-cynical return to form for the band who soundtracked teen angst for so many of us in the first place.