After coming back last year with the triumphant and long-awaited album Fear Inoculum, Tool were planning to spend their spring on a North American arena tour. They were two shows into that tour when the pandemic hit. (Maynard James Keenan has instead gotten busy with his ba Puscifer side project. Puscifer released their single “Apocalyptical” last month, and they’ve said that there’s a new album coming this fall.) While many of Tool’s peers have rescheduled their planned shows for fall or for 2021, Tool have announced on Facebook that they’ve made the difficult decision to straight-up cancel the rest of the tour. They’ve got a good reason for it.

Fans who bought tickets to those Tool shows can now get refunds. If they hadn’t canceled, fans would’ve been able to use their tickets for the rescheduled shows. But given that nobody knows when large-scale concerts will be able to return, they’d rather just give the money back. In their Facebook announcement, the band writes, “In our opinion, tying up our fans’ money for months, if not a full year, is unfair.” Tool tickets aren’t cheap, and this is probably going to make a difference in some people’s lives. Good on Tool.

Here’s the full text of the announcement:

As so many music lovers have come to realize over the last several weeks, there is no playbook that artists, promoters and venues can pull from in these unprecedented times.

When we played what would be our final show of 2020, March 11 at Portland’s Moda Center, we believed we would be back on the road sometime this Fall. As we worked towards that goal we’ve come to realize that there is absolutely no certainty in re-scheduling dates for this Fall or 2021. State and local ordinances vary widely and no one can predict when high capacity events will safely return.

At the same time that we were working to reschedule this tour, we read your messages. Messages of job losses, illness, emotional and financial pain. We could continue to postpone or reschedule dates for some time into 2021 but ethically, we do not think this is the right course of action. In our opinion, tying up our fans’ money for months, if not a full year, is unfair. With that in mind, we have made the very difficult decision to cancel the tour so we can help support the people who have supported us for years.

Please know, we want nothing more than to return to the road, to play these songs for you and to celebrate our shared recovery. When the time is right, we will do just that.

In the coming days you will receive an email from the ticketing service you purchased tickets through notifying you of the event cancellation and when to expect your refund.

This would’ve been a bad time for Maynard’s riot cop costume anyway.