OBSCURA - Akroasis 5/2/16

Pingouin a écrit:Vu que ça fait 3 fois que des membres du groupe se barrent en l'ayant mauvaise, c'est à se demander si Kummerer ne serait pas un gros con...

He left? But I JUST learned how to spell his last name!

Pingouin a écrit:Sinon, on peut faire comme avant Internet : attendre que l'album sorte pour le choper et tout bouffer d'un coup.

Chris and I have written at least 80% of the music on Omnivium. I have also arranged most of the songs and overseen the mix. Steffen was upset about it, which is somewhat understandable, because he has formed the band. But you have to realize he contributed so little material, which is a shame, because what he brought was good.
On Omnivium, perhaps 15% of the riffs were from him. Even in song structures or the like, there was no input from him. This is simply not enough, especially from a songwriter. I don't want to convey the impression that i am in charge. In NECROPHAGIST I have never helped write the music. With BLOTTED SCIENCE I just wrote my own drum parts. It doesn't bother me.
Steffen wanted the songwriting to be divided equally between the 4 members on the next album, which I agreed to. But in the end, there were 6 songs from me, 2 from Chris and Steffen had only half a song. At the same time he complained about it but that's how things were. It gets annoying that you put effort into writing material that someone else keeps rejecting for personal reasons. I simply had no desire to be blocked by someone else any more."

As you probably have heard by now, Obscura and I have parted ways. I´m still on good terms with Linus and Sebastian and am very much looking forward to the next time we´ll get to work together (plans have already been made). I also want to thank my friend Christian Münzner for giving me this opportunity in the first place.

Now, I was under the impression that there would at least be some sort of official statement from the band regarding the line-up change and felt that it would be unwise to „spill the beans“ on my own. I offered (to Linus) to do a joined statement, just like when Hannes and Chris left the band last year, but that didn´t happen. Instead, the band decided to release a teaser for the upcoming album „Akroasis“ (which will be out in february on Relapse Records ), which combined samples from the album I played on, co-wrote and co-arranged with the name and picture of their new guitar player (who I don´t know and have no reason to hold ANY animosity against) without any explanation. The same video was also released to the press without explaining the situation (see blabbermouth etc.) After some outrage from fans (the amount of which surprised even me - THANK YOU so much for your support, guys and gals!), the band issued another statement yesterday, calling it a „misunderstanding“ and announced the change of guitar players. Now, I am completely willing to take the high-road here and leave it at that, for the sake of everybody involved, no matter how disappointed I was about this „move" (which is most definitely hurting my career, since 90% of a pretty large audience will now think the line-up in the video is the one they´re listening to until the album actually comes out). However, I do have my qualms with the following statement that the band made earlier: „Geldschläger got fired in early july, the album was finished as a three piece. He will get credited anyway.“ (screenshot of it in the first comment below), because that is a disrespectful half-truth, making it sound as if I would be LUCKY to be credited at all.
The following is not my personal opinion, but a collection of facts (provable with documents, emails etc. if necessary): I got „fired“ on the last day of mixing the album, on saturday July 18h, 7 days before our scheduled flights to the USA, via a phone-call from Steffen, AFTER a mutual contact had come forward and told me that he and others had already been approached to replace me as session guitar-player for the "summer slaughter“ tour. I wrote „“ because legally it wasn´t possible to fire a member of the band´s company this way without a full company meeting. However, as you can imagine, clinging to this position under such circumstances would´ve been absurd, so it was agreed on the fact that we parted ways because of Steffen´s and my „musical and personal differences“. After that, technically they did finish the album as a three-piece, however that only goes for the last day in the studio, tweaking the mix and mastering. Wether they did change the album significantly in that time, I cannot say, having not even received the final mixes, except for the two songs I´ve contributed (which include the 15-minute „Weltseele“).

The videos of me playing what-would´ve-been the band´s set for „The Summer Slaughter Tour 2015“ (which I did with Christian´s kind permission, since I was playing his lines and solos) were then subsequently removed from youtube by „Orchard Music“ by request of the „rights owner“ (again, not pointing fingers, just stating facts). Since I will never go on tour with Obscura, but spent a considerable amount of time preparing and adapting the songs, I want to point out they´ve been re-uploaded to my official facebook-page for anybody interested in how I played the band´s older material. Also, recent rumors I´ve heard that the split happened because I „wasn´t prepared enough for the tour“ should be debunked easily this way. (here´s „Septuagint“: https://www.facebook.com/fountainheadmusician/videos/1013799328661523/?l=3581579728714056832 ). As for any other rumors, the music on "Akroasis" (and my contribution to it) should speak for itself. Let me also add that I think that, despite immense pressure, Linus and Sebastian stepped up AMAZINGLY on this album - each of us had to walk in pretty large footsteps and despite the unfortunate developments since, I´m proud as hell of these two monster musicians. Working with Victor (who produced, mixed and mastered "Akroasis") was also a good experience and as you´ve already heard in the teaser, he delivered masterfully.
So, with that now cleared up, I nonetheless hope that both sides can continue with no more bad blood being spilt and focus on what´s really important here: the music. Despite the circumstances, I still hope you´ll give the album a warm reception and go see their new line-up promoting it live. I wish everybody in the band the best for the future and would hate to see them or me to be associated with anything besides great music more than is already the case.