By now, you likely know a little about Wovenwar. The band rose from the ashes of As I Lay Dying after frontman Tim Lambesis was arrested and eventually convicted of solicitation of murder after trying to hire a hitman to cap his wife. The rest of the band quit and recruited vocalist Shane Blay and released a solid self-titled debut. On the verge of their sophomore release, Honor Is Dead, guitarist Nick Hipa spoke to Billboard and unleashed some fury in the direction of his former bandmate.
Hipa took issue with the Alternative Press article that went up moments after Lambesis was found guilty, which we summarized here, saying the article did a lot of damage to the rest of the band and Lambesis' estranged wife, Meggan:
"The day he had to account for what he had done, all this comes out. And then the response to that was a lot of people supported him. A lot of people said negative things about Meggan and her family, and it was very hurtful to them," recalls Hipa. "They felt like [as] the victims of the situation [they] never had a voice, never stood a chance."
Hipa notes that the AP article "set the tone for so much of what we would encounter for the next year-and-a-half. You get things like that that would come out, and people would chime in on it. It would shape the way that people viewed us and what we were doing. People would go out of their way to personally tell me how terrible a dude I was, how much they hoped awful things would happen to me and my family." He atrributes such behavior to people being "overly opinionated and underinformed," but it hasn't made it easier for him to hear brutal opinions from fans who "bought that lie [that Meggan] probably deserved it."
"None of them know those kids or that woman like we do. They don't understand what he put them through to get her to a place to be like, 'You know what? I have to protect these children from you,'" explains Hipa. "If anyone can look at the situation objectively, they can even see this guy tried to have someone murdered, and his reasoning was that he was on steroids so he was unable to think rationally, and he lost his religion, so he wasn't able to make any moral decisions. This is who he says he was at the time, and that's why he tried to kill her. If that's the type of person you're admitting to being, what sort of good mother do you think would let their kids hang around with that [kind of] personality?"
It's a truly unfortunate situation for the rest of the group. The Lambesis interview was conducted before his case was over and one of the conditions was that AltPress wait to release it until after the verdict, so none of the discussions could be used as evidence. Still, you could see how the band would feel blindsided by the move, as they noted previously getting text messages while still at the court house after the ruling, getting excerpts of claims Lambesis made in his interview.
Hipa goes on to mention the most recent Lambesis news – his $35 million dollar lawsuit against two Southern California detention facilities for denying him prescriptions and gross negligence, saying the drugs they denied him were to offset the side effects of steroid withdrawl and that he developed man-boobs.
Hipa said the case is evidence that Lambesis hasn't at all learned from his mistakes and is still the same person:
"It’s sad to see somebody that we spent so much of our lives with end up in such a place,” says Hipa of the recent development. “He could have made such a great impact on this world, but he just gave in to the worst parts of himself. Even more discouraging for me is the fact that he’s trying to file a lawsuit for that amount. It says to me he’s still the same sort of personality at his core; nothing has changed. He thinks of himself a certain way, and he thinks of himself in a situation he created as a victim."
Hipa is moving on and says the new Wovenwar album is a bit of a transition as their debut was still written while "they were in purgatory." The new track the band premiered with Billboard, "Lines in the Sand" is a solid evolution for the group:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH46AP3UZOQ[/youtube]
You can pre-order Honor is Dead at Metal Blade.
[h/t RockFeed]
