You may have heard that Emmure and The Acacia Strain will be touring together this fall on the Eternal Enemies tour. We were a bit shocked by this because we always thought there was beef between the two sides ever since frontman Frankie Palmeri and Vincent Bennett got into a brass knucks fight.
Turns out, there is more to the story. Emmure frontman Frankie Palmeri recently appeared on Jamey Jasta's podcast and went through the timeline of what led to the drama. The fine folks at ThePRP did the thankless job of transcribing the whole thing.
It all started as Emmure were coming up and there were rumblings that they were "stealing" The Acacia Strain's sound. I'm assuming this led to people talking shit to Acacia frontman Vincent Bennett who started to publicly knock Emmure:
“Here’s really how that played out, from the top as short as I can make it, is we were cool. Literally he would come to our shows and like mosh, he thought we were dope. We were fans-we’re still fans now, just to put it out of the way, I still dig the band and ya know, cool guys and everything.
But the relationship went from like us being cool to hearing him talk shit about us. I’m not the kind of person to run my mouth about really anybody, ever, especially if I don’t have a reason to. That’s just how I am. But anyways, everywhere I went ‘oh Vince said this about you’ and I was like, ‘yeah, really don’t care.’ And then they had written a song which everyone was like ‘yo, that song is about you guys’, like 110%.
The video in question is Acacia Strain's "Skynet." What's interesting is how Frankie Palmeri chose to respond:
And so you know, I was like ok, I’m gonna basically get on your level and top you and just completely dis you even harder. And I did it by mentioning a fellatio experience with his now current wife.
That’s where the lyric came from, and so it comes from a personal place for me. So to me its like if you’re offended by that, you’re just looking for a reason to get riled up and truthfully you’re just that bored. That’s the long story short and now we’re cool and when we see each other we say what’s up.I left the part out we did get into a fistfight at Northern Lights around the same time the album had dropped and I have a scar on my nipple from it and everything, but I won’t… [get into that.]“
I had no idea that the lyric which inspired one of the worst shirts ever was about Bennett's current wife.
For somebody who's saying that the beef is over, this is certainly pouring salt in old wounds, is it not? Anyway, Frankie gives his side of the fight:
“Here’s the thing I think that we both gained from it. The hype and the tension—’cause it just built and built and built and when we actually fought it was like the biggest thing ever, like ‘oh my god, it really happened.’ And you know people still rap about it now. But honestly I think at this point I think it’s kind of mellowed out and people don’t really associate us as much as they used to.
Mostly because, like I said, we squashed the beef and everyone knows that so its kind of become a dead subject. I don’t know if I’m ranting in the wrong direction, but yeah we’re totally cool with those guys.
I think that looking back I think we could have made a more positive thing out of it if we were really smart, but we were really stupid and decided to fight. But you live and learn and we were both younger… I really wish I had been smart enough at the time to link up with him and be like ‘yo man lets blow this up and make it bigger and bigger and bigger.’ But you know, whatever it got real for a second and whatever, things like that happen.”
I'm glad these guys have settled their differences. Then again, if I was Bennett and I was reading these excerpts, I feel like I would get mad all over again at Frankie for bringing all this shit up again.
This should be a fun tour.
