The Metal/Punk/Rock Thread

[Egg Shen]

On 8/12/2022 at 9:38 PM, WyattSheepMask said:

Promotors still booking Decapitated is very disappointing 

why's that?

[Keith Houchen]

Because they’re rapists?

[WyattSheepMask]

9 minutes ago, Egg Shen said:

why's that?

The kidnap & rape allegations from the other year. Two members have left the band since (Wacław Kiełtyka is now in Machine Head, but was absent at the weekend) but two still remain 

 

Edited August 16, 2022 by WyattSheepMask

[Egg Shen]

Wasn't they completely cleared of the charges? I might be wrong.

Vogg is in both Decapitated and Machine Head now.

[Keith Houchen]

13 minutes ago, Egg Shen said:

Wasn't they completely cleared of the charges? I might be wrong.

No. The prosecution dropped the case at the behest of the complainant. A world of difference. 

[WyattSheepMask]

@Keith Houchen got there just before I did.

17 minutes ago, Egg Shen said:

 

Vogg is in both Decapitated and Machine Head now.

My bad, I mistook him for his brother who passed away a few years ago

Edited August 16, 2022 by WyattSheepMask

[Merzbow]

The court case was a shit show that seemed to put the victim on trial, but that sadly doesn't seem uncommon.

[WyattSheepMask]

13 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

The court case was a shit show that seemed to put the victim on trial, but that sadly doesn't seem uncommon.

I was talking with a mate of mine about it the other shortly after the announcement was made. I’d say I’m a proponent of innocent until proven guilty, but that whole situation stunk from minute one, and I find it hard to believe that if someone was just looking for an easy pay day that they’d go after a Polish Death Metal band.

We’ve spoken before about Bloodstock’s questionable bookings and they don’t seem to want to learn, like how Behemoth headlined this year despite Darski’s recollection in his book to witnessing a rape on a bus as being rock n’ roll bants, and that’s before you get to the claims against him from previous partners

[Egg Shen]

is there a decent detailed report anywhere on the Decapitated case? i can only find brief news website posts.

 

[WyattSheepMask]

1 hour ago, Egg Shen said:

is there a decent detailed report anywhere on the Decapitated case? i can only find brief news website posts.

 

The most detailed seem to be from these:

The Independent (2 weeks after the alleged incident) - Decapitated: Polish metal band accused of gang rape after being arrested on kidnapping charges | The Independent | The Independent - It seems to be behind a paywall on mobile but Desktop brings it up, and I've stuck it behind spoiler tags for length

Spoiler

Polish metal band Decapitated have been accused of gang rape after they were arrested on charges of first-degree kidnapping.

The incident allegedly took place after the band's 31 August show at The Pin venue in Spokane, Washington state. The four band members, Michael Lysejko, Waclaw Kieltyka, Rafal Piotrowski and Hubert Wiecek, were arrested in Los Angeles following the accusation of kidnapping.

A woman claimed that she was held against her will by the band, which prompted Spokane Police Department to work with the LA County Sheriff's office to place them in custody.

She walked and called several family members before calling 911, according to court documents, and an officer found her around two miles from the venue.

Officials observed that when the woman who accuses the band members of rape was picked up she had "significant bruising to her upper arms consistent with being restrained" as well as "small abrasions to her knuckles that were scabbed over". She said during the rape she was "digging her fist into the wall to try and distract herself from what was happening".

 

The officer also visited the venue and checked the area for the tour bus but "the band had already left Spokane for their next venue".

The members of Decapitated reportedly gave varying accounts as to what happened on the night of 31 August.

When shown photos of the women, Lysejko refused to speak without a translator and "made no comment other than he did not know who the girls were".

He told authorities that "both Piotrowski and Wiecek engaged in sex acts with the woman. Piotrowski and Wiecek said the woman had been on the bus but were not sure as to what exactly had happened. They also refused to speak without a translator.

Kieltyka, the lead guitarist, told detectives he saw Piotrowski and Wiecek engage in sex acts with the woman in the bathroom. He agreed to have a DNA swab collected as evidence.

Piotrowski and Wiecek declined to give a DNA sample.

Steve Graham, the defence lawyer who is representing the band, commented: "Decapitated plan to fully fight the allegations that are brought against them, and we are fully confident that the other side of this story will be heard."

The band's official Facebook page appears to have been temporarily deactivated.

The Independent has reached out to the band's label for comment.

Seattle Times (from when the charges were dropped)- Spokane County drops rape charges against all members of Polish death metal band Decapitated | The Seattle Times - likewise, spiler tagged for length

Spoiler

Prosecutors have dropped rape and kidnapping charges against all four members of the death metal band Decapitated, ensuring their eventual return to their home country of Poland after months of detainment in the United States.

Waclaw Kieltyka, 35, Michal Lysejko, 27, Rafal Piotrowski, 31, and Hubert Wiecek, 30, were scheduled to begin trial later this month in Spokane County Superior Court for the alleged gang rape of a local woman after their show in downtown Spokane on Aug. 31.

 

But on Friday, Spokane County prosecutor Kelly Fitzgerald filed a motion dropping all rape and kidnapping charges without prejudice, meaning the four men could be prosecuted in the future. The motion cites “the well being of the victim” and “in the interest of justice” as a reason for dismissal.

 

“This has been traumatizing to her,” Fitzgerald said of the accuser. “It’s obviously something that is a multiple-defender case, and it would be a lengthy trial.”

Fitzgerald said while the state has a responsibility to the community in prosecuting crimes, in special assault cases they also have to be cognizant of victims, in this case a young woman.

“We’ve discussed with her and her advocates and feel at this time it’s best for her to heal,” she said.

The band’s attorneys said news of the dismissal was surreal, but expected. Steve Graham, representing Kieltyka, said that, while he can only speak for his client, “everyone is relieved and they’re looking to get back home.”

Jeffry Finer, attorney for Piotrowsk, said the accuser was heavily involved in the decision to drop charges. He said attorneys were confident prosecution would drop charges once they had all of the evidence from defense witnesses, which included scores of concert goers.

“A close review of the evidence is all it took,” he said. “We are not criticizing the county for moving slow. It just took a long time to get all of the evidence, all of the witnesses, and there were so many witnesses.”

Two weeks ago, Graham said “new evidence” came to light that “seriously cast doubt” over the state’s case, which consisted largely of testimony from two women who told police they were kidnapped and held against their will on the band’s tour bus after the show. One of the women was able to escape while her friend was forced to stay on the bus.

 

The woman told officers she was brutally raped by each member of the band in the bathroom of the bus. She said they all took turns forcing her to perform sexual acts. When they were done, they kicked her off the bus.

Later at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, police noted “significant bruising to her upper arms consistent with being restrained” and “small abrasions to her knuckles that were scabbed over.”

The victim’s friend was pulled over later that night and cited with a DUI. While in the back of the patrol car, she told the officer her friend was being assaulted, but without a specific location, the officer was unable to help.

Attorneys for the four accused have consistently argued their client’s innocence. While he wouldn’t divulge the state’s reasoning for dropping the charges, Graham said Spokane police officers may have been misinformed on what happens at metal shows that could explain the woman’s bruising.

 

“We subpoenaed the list of concert attendees and found numerous people who say that she was in the front row of the mosh pit and was climbing up on stage, and getting jostled about as much as anyone else there,” he said. “There’s no question from our perspective that the case against these four guys was falling apart.”

A representative from the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office was not immediately available.

Had it gone to trial, defense attorneys had also planned to cast doubt over the accuser, who they deemed untrustworthy based on a previous encounter with law enforcement. In 2014, she admitted to lying to police about injuries she sustained during an assault, when her boyfriend was accused of stabbing three people. She instead was injured by her boyfriend during a previous argument.

The band members have been out of jail since late last year, when bail was dropped and they were released on their own recognizance. They were ordered to stay within the state but were allowed to leave the county until ordered to return.

Graham said Judge Julie McKay’s decision to release the four was spurred by a letter of support from Polish politician Dominik Tarczynski, who contacted the court on the band’s behalf saying he urged the judge to “consider release of these men on bail until their charges can be resolved.”

During their release hearings, attorneys introduced written testimony from Andy Marsh, a member of Thy Art is Murder, which was playing the same show as Decapitated that night. Marsh said he saw the woman in the front of the stage, in an area commonly referred to as a “mosh pit,” where she was violently dancing, which could have explained some of the bruising.

Finer and Graham said the four are awaiting official word from Immigration and Customs Enforcement as to when they

can return to Poland. They’ve been in the United States since June, when their tour began.

And while the band’s extended stay in the state’s was unfortunate due to the criminal trial, Finer said, they were still grateful to the Spokane community for treating them fairly.

“All of them were saying they will always remember the kindness of the people here,” he said. “We made it as reasonable a two months as we could while the county took its time and did its due diligence, and determined correctly that the case needed to be dismissed.”

The Independent also ran this article about the vitriol aiming at the accuser - The Decapitated allegations and misogyny in the metal scene | The Independent | The Independent

Spoiler

Last week, reports surfaced that the Polish metal band Decapitated had been arrested on kidnapping charges after a fan visited their tour bus after a gig in Spokane, Washington State.

It emerged that the fan alleged the band had taken it in turns to rape her in the bus’s bathroom. At the time of writing, Decapitated were being held in an LA jail, awaiting extradition to Spokane to face the charges. The allegations are grim – and, it should be said, currently unproven as the investigation continues (the band deny all allegations against them) – but what’s even more sickening is the level of vitriol directed at the alleged victim.

 

Online discussions about the case range from people dismissing the accusations as “complete BS” and saying the fact that tour bus bathrooms are very small disproves them, to terms like “crazy groupie” being bandied around, and the inevitable “false rape claims ruin lives”. One of the most disappointing was a comment made by a woman, speculating that the alleged victim must have willingly slept with the band members and made up the allegations to cover her tracks when her boyfriend found out.

Dismissing the allegations as a lie seems to be the knee-jerk reaction of a certain set of people living with the baffling – and incorrect – belief that we live in a society where men are constantly at risk from a false rape claim epidemic. That simply is not true. While it’s hard to accurately quantify how many rape claims actually are false due to the fact that hardly any assaults are reported to the authorities (15 per cent in England and Wales), a 2013 CPS report compares the number of prosecutions for rape between January 2011 and May 2012 with the number of prosecutions for making a false claim.

False claim charges were fewer than 1 per cent of the number of rape prosecutions. They are not the widespread societal ill some people seem to believe – especially, for some reason, fans of Decapitated.

There are multiple issues at play here. There’s the assumption that women are incapable of respecting or enjoying the artistic output of men without sexually desiring them, or that every woman wants to f*** a rock star; the assumption that metal, especially death metal, is too manly a noise for a woman to like, therefore her motives for being at a show or wanting to meet a band must be something else.

Female metal musicians are outnumbered by men and still face the boring “woman in a band” question in interviews, which shows even they’re still, sadly, regarded by some as a novelty, which doesn’t help normalise the presence of female fans.

 

The fact that even other women are casting aspersions on the allegations not only demonstrates quite horrifying levels of internalised misogyny, but also upholds the notion of women as a novelty in the rock scene. I’d hazard a guess that the woman who wrote those comments probably sees herself as “one of the boys” because that’s preferable to being “like other girls”; a mythical, homogenous female tribe who only go to gigs to try and bed band members or because their boyfriend likes the music.

But being a female metal fan isn’t a choice between being a ladette or a groupie. There’s no set criteria a woman must fit before she can enjoy metal purely for its sonic merits. Sure, some women might fantasise about sleeping with their favourite band members, just as men do about female celebrities. But a fantasy does not imply consent or detract from the fact that a woman can be a sexual being and, in a separate part of her personality, enjoy music. The distrust and derision of female metal fans seems like an easier option to some than the cognitive dissonance that comes with accepting someone you respect as an artist might also be capable of a crime.

Not all metal fans think like this. In fact, attitudes are changing, thanks to artists like Architects, Venom Prison and Stray From The Path, to name a few, who vocally champion equality. But the amount of online comments that state with such vitriolic certainty that Decapitated’s accuser is lying shows there’s still a problem.

The metal scene can be an incredibly supportive community when it wants to be, but those who view female fans as interlopers to be regarded with suspicion are actively keeping it in the dark ages.

Nobody knows what happened on that tour bus except for the band and the alleged victim, and until the truth becomes known, she should be able to count on the support of her fellow fans, rather than having her character assassinated by those who subscribe to the misogynist and dangerous attitudes that stop 85 per cent of the 85,000 women who are raped every year in England alone from coming forward.

 

Edited August 16, 2022 by WyattSheepMask

[WyattSheepMask]

I can’t recall this being mentioned without traipsing back through this or the gig thread, but I know there’s some who are big into Cave In on here 

 

[WyattSheepMask]

Neurosis have issued a statement revealing that they severed ties with Scott Kelly back in 2019. This is in response to Kelly’s admission to “emotional, financial, verbal and physical abuse” of his wife and younger children

Neurosis Statement- https://www.brooklynvegan.com/neurosis-post-statement-on-scott-kelly-revealing-they-parted-ways-with-him-in-2019/

Scott Kelly Admission - https://www.brooklynvegan.com/neurosis-scott-kelly-admits-to-abusing-wife-and-children-says-hes-retiring-from-music/

[Merzbow]

I get that Neurosis wanted to get that out there as a reply to Scott's weirdly narcissistic admission but his wife didn't want anything said at all from what I've now been told.

[wordsfromlee]

I've been rinsing the Heriot record recently. Brilliant stuff.

 

[Merzbow]

Yeah they're so good, part of that new wave of British bands like Pupil Slicer and Ithaca who should be the absolute future of metal/hardcore around here. I'd put Penance Stare amongst them, too, since leaving behind a lot of the Velvet Cacoon inspired lofi black metal for a mix with more screamo and sasscore. Not that I don't adore the earlier material but the newer stuff fits in.