When we learned last week that the Mayhem Cruise was canceled, we like everyone else who had planned to go, were disappointed and wondered what happened exactly.

This week, I got the chance to interview Scott Ian for an upcoming feature on Anthrax in The Oregonian. While I had him on the phone, I asked him for his thoughts on the cancelation, since Anthrax was to be one of the voyage’s headliners. Here’s what he said in its entirety.

 I saw the press release, and we were as surprised as everybody else. We were literally out on the Mayhem Tour when we heard that the cruise was canceled. It’s a bummer. We were all really looking forward to it. It’s funny because us Machine Head, Lamb of God, we’re all good friends, we’ve all known each other forever. None of us had ever been on a cruise before. We were all in Europe this summer playing festivals together and we were like, “What do you think of this cruise thing? What’s your take on it?” Everyone was kind of like, “Alright, it’s a little weird, we’re going to be stuck on this boat for four days,” but everyone was excited that we were going to get to hang out and all get really shitty and have a lot of fun. I know all of us were bummed and I heard from the Machine Head guys that they were bummed. Yeah, I don’t know why [it was canceled]. I can speculate and think that maybe in this economy, it’s kind of tough to sell a ticket for that much money. You get all these bands and it’s three days on a boat, if you break it down to what it’s costing you per day, it doesn’t seem like a lot of money. But I understand where we’re at in this world in 2012. People just don’t have that kind of money to shell out. I can only assume it comes down to that.

I think it would have been great to see all of these bands truly enjoying themselves as they discover the joy of cruising on their first voyage. One wonders why fans can support other concert cruises, but this one couldn’t reach critical mass. Perhaps the flaw here was in booking acts that toured the US with a festival sixth months before the sail date. In any case, I hope Anthrax and the rest of this lineup finds their way to the seas at some point.

Image: Scott Ian performing with Anthrax on the Mayhem Festival. By Curtis Lehmkuhl for Sun-Times Media.