Strat has some valid points Ron. Travel in europe is not the easiest thing to do, there are visas involved, and the roads are terrible in alot of places as they still follow the contour of the land and that means while you drive up a mountain forever your not really making much headway, or you drive along a coastline hugging every turn in and out lots of mileage with very little progress.  I would be like befor the interstates where built in the US, long winding roads that take you forever to get somewhere, and then imagine having to show visa's at each state line. Big pain in the ass. For instance, why does Euro Disney do so poorly, because travel is such a pain to get there, Why not just hop a plane to Florida and you only need one visa to do it! 
So, it's not easy to move about europe in vast milage.
The reason the bands play so many venues here is the area of the US is so vast, and in general most americans are too lazy to put forth too much mileage to go see a show. They may do it for a vacation but many of them simply wouldn't bother for a show.
Ron you may have had that many accessbile shows, but the closest show to me, would have been a five and a half hour trip, that was the CLOSEST, which I didn't go to, but I went to the third closest to me which was a 7 and half hour trip, close to 400 miles, if not more. The second closest would have been Pittsburgh at six and a half hours. So not everyone had shows that close to them.

		_strat_ wrote:
		Hmm... If Im not much mistaken, the nearest they came to me on this tour is Vienna... WHich is about 3 or 4 hours drive away... On an empty road, with no stops, with favourable wind. That is if they dont reschedule the shows in Zagreb and Belgrade, which they still havent, and I dont know what they are waiting for. IDK, they certainly have a packed schedule on the American tour, maybe thats why they find it hard to do more shows elsewhere. IDK, we would have to ask them. Or wheover organises those shows for them.      ron h wrote:   Hey Strat...To better illustrate my thinking which has been known to be flawed lol here's what I mean... My home to... ...downtown Chicago  18 miles ...Milwaukee  103 miles ...Indianapolis  143 miles ...Detroit  236 miles ...Cleveland  281 miles ...St. Louis  423 miles If I'm not mistaken, Priest played all of the cities...if they wer're to only play 1 maybe 2 of these cities, there wouldn't have been an empty seat in the house and could have probably played (a) bigger venue(s).  Priest are loyal to their core group of fans and they'll play anywhere here (and we thank them for it) but I think they pay a price for it as well.      _strat_ wrote:   IDK about that... Theres about twice as many people living in Europe than in whole of north America. They could double the number of European shows, and still play in full venues. What is true, I guess, is that all the borders and stuff makes it more time consuming and expensive to travel, thats why it makes it difficult when they skip enitre countries on tours. IDK, I usualy envy you guys in the states... It seems like whenever someone goes on tour there, they play everywhere where there are at least ten fans.      ron h wrote:   I think it's because of the size of the States.  Overseas you've got smaller countries grouped together, like our New England states, therefore there's no need to play a 30 show tour in say Europe...a couple of shows will do it and the fans flock because there's so few.  Using where I live as an example, I could have caught Priest at any one of 6 of their shows all within 500 miles **Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Indianaplois, Detroit or Cleveland**  That being said, we don't have a Download Festival type event.  At one time we had the US Festival, which if continued it could have rivaled a Download, but that never happened.  Just an opinion off the top of my head...but it's certainly not for a lack of enthusiasm!!!    (Quoting Message by ProwlerCub from Saturday, September 05, 2009 6:56:33 AM)   ProwlerCub wrote:   I was watching That Metal Show the other day and they had a special from the Download Festival.  It seemed to me that there seems to be a greater outlet for metal bands overseas than there is in the US.  I am not talking about the intensity of the fans but a greater chance for exposure of bands overseas.  Why is it that some bands can play larger venues overseas but come to the US and have to play clubs (if they even tour the US at all)?  Thoughts?  Comments? Edited at: Saturday, September 05, 2009 8:00:48 AM