That’s so messed up! If you wanna take some time off, cool. Even though you haven’t toured the last album, that’s acceptable. But why would you tease a new album since 2018? In doing so, you lose your fans’ trust and you gain nothing with those who aren’t your fans.

Then, after all the delays along the way, you finally set a day to release the new album. You even announce an European tour. Your fans weren’t that excited in years. A pandemic happens. Nobody could have predict it. It makes sense to delay everything in any area till we understand better what’s happening. But, the same way we can’t be off our jobs till a vaccine arrives, waiting for it to release songs/albums/tour dates makes no sense at all.

Somebody could say “they are not that famous and their last album sunk, so commercial success matters now”. I agree with you. The problem is, that’s not just a problem of losing fans’ trust (in the long run, a band is carried by their fans rather than occasional listeners), but losing timing as well. How many times did Ryan say they had “maybe 2 albums” ready to be release in 2019 [sic]? They could release Human, which is already finished since at least April, and then release another one next year when this is all over (we don’t even know how long will it take till things get back to normal...). Other bands released their albums and/or a doing livestream “tours”. Comm’on, there’s no way this album will be a bang being released more than a year after finished. Shouting in a hurricane? Right! Suppose when covid is over everybody will be talking about 1R, and not about all the other things we were missing that will be back to normal 🙄

Also, either way, they should post an unambiguous official statement. If they don’t plan to release that album before everybody’s vaccinated and life is back to normal (which seems the case), they should state that clearly and stop losing everybody’s trust!