Good news! Byzantine will release The Cicada Tree on July 28 and the new song "New Ways To Bear Witness" is awesome! The video, which features Skeletonwitch's Dustin Boltjes, and ex-Byzantine drummer Matt Wolfe cameos and is pretty enticing itself, didn't go so great for vocalist and guitarist Chris "OJ" Ojeda.
During the filming for the video, Ojeda says he had to get hit by a vehicle driven by Wolfe a few times to get the shot right, and it ended up giving him a concussion.
"So, we came up with an idea of having our old drummer do a cameo appearance in the music video. Matt Wolfe left the band right before we signed with Metal Blade and had occupied the drum seat for the last 12 years. We felt it was a perfect opportunity to let fans know that we still love Matt and he’s still welcome and important to our band. What’s the best way to have an ousted band member make a cameo? To hit me with a vehicle, of course!
We set up the scene and did about 5 or 6 takes of Wolfe hitting me with the vehicle and me rolling off the vehicle. I didn’t know until we wrapped shooting the next day that something was wrong and had a very hard time driving home. I contacted an ER doctor friend of mine who told me I needed to come see him ASAP. After a CT Scan and an EKG, he let me know I had a standard sports type concussion from repeatedly hitting my head during the video shoot. I got 3 days off work and a cool story out of it! Rock!"
Help Ojeda feel better by pre-ordering the album here. I mean, it's not gonna give him a reverse concussion, but I'm sure it'll make him happy.
