It's so hard to constantly write about all the people Nachtmystium's Blake Judd has screwed. It started a few months ago, when Judd was arrested for stealing a friend's guitar and news surfaced of him not making good on online transactions with fans.
It got so bad that fans created a Facebook page to warn others of his awful ways and band together to get their money back from Paypal.
Many blamed the situation on Judd's obvious heroin problem. But, a former band mate says Judd was like this even before he was introduced to heroin. Krieg's Neill Jameson penned a depressing but very necessary read for Noisey about all the times Judd has screwed him over. Judd played briefly in Krieg, and Jameson played briefly in Nachtmystium. They both played in Twilight, before Judd was booted from the band.
Here is the most uncomfortable passage in the story:
He woke me up around 3 in the morning by sitting on my chest and holding me down. I was aware he was fucking around with heroin under the misguided idea that it would help him with his music. His idolatry of Kurt Cobain was very well known amongst his friends. He told me when I woke up that we were going to take a cab (in a fucking blizzard) to the ghetto to buy heroin. He told me that I was a “poser” for covering the Velvet Underground without ever shooting up. We got into a somewhat physical altercation and he told me “You need this. It’s time you had another tragedy in your life” before calling me a “faggot” and leaving. By the time he got home with the drugs I was asleep on the floor of O’Hare. That was the last time I saw him in any kind of good physical shape.
Jameson tells many tales of Judd licensing music that he did not own to other labels so that he could score money, or offering to sell music to Jameson, only to have Jameson pay him and never see the results. For example:
I withdrew from the internet world of forums and talked to only a few people, Blake being one of them. Krieg’s album Blue Miasma was released and I was nowhere to be found. So you can imagine how I felt when years later I found out that Blake had been telling whoever would listen that he wrote the entire album. Around this same time he licensed the first two Krieg records to a label for vinyl release. I was only tangentially aware of this but what I wasn’t aware of is that he sold the rights to the records and kept the money without telling me it even existed. He did the same in 2009 when Krieg signed to Candlelight, he sold them the CD rights to the first two albums. Rights he did not own. I never saw a dime. The CD reissues remain unreleased.
Last week, Century Media offered to make good on any fans screwed by Judd on the release of the new Nachtmystium album. At the time, we heralded the label for making the right call. Jameson, however, feels this is another case of Judd being enabled:
“Century Media is doing their best to make up for his mistake with fans and fulfilling orders. My problem with this is both petty and also somewhat larger. The petty part comes from wondering why Twilight never got shit for what we had to put up with because of him. But the other part of me worries that this basically shows him that he doesn’t have to worry about consequences. Someone will always clean up his mess for him. And in a few months after this new deal pays him he’s going to pop back up and try to convince the world that he’s sober and to start sending him money again. He’s following the Hollywood path of remaking the same fucking movie over and over again, with weaker results each time. And people will welcome him back with open arms. Because, like I said, he’s only fucked over about 1% of his total fanbase. There’s still 99% of you out there who post shit like ‘well he never fucked me over, you guys are all haters’ etc when the subject gets brought up. And you’ll keep enabling him to continue to hurt people, to fuck people over and to treat people like refuse because beyond being a junkie he’s also a solipsist. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself because to him that’s all there is.”
I honestly never even thought of it this way, but Jameson makes a very good point here. Ultimately, I still commend Century for making good for the fans, but it sucks that once again, Judd got away with it.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. We highly recommend the entire read.
The lessons here? Don't do heroin, and don't trust Blake Judd.
