Last September, when Brandon Butler announced he was leaving Veil of Maya, it was a pretty shocking turn of events. What could've led to this decision?
At the time, Butler released a lengthy statement which can be boiled down to one sentence within the statement: "They have a strong vision for how this album should sound and personally and creatively I had a different view from theirs which caused a wedge between us in this last year." At the time, we wondered if that meant Veil of Maya would be changing the vocal style of their music, which did end up happening, with the introduction of clean vocals on the new album, Matriarch.
But what was the tipping point? According to guitarist Marc Okubo on the most recent MetalSucks podcast, the final straw was an argument on one of the last days of Mayhem Fest last year over empty cans on their bus:
It kind of happened while we were on the Mayhem tour. I was asleep — I slept through all of this — I guess it was a drunken argument that got out of control. I think it was about cleaning the bus, actually. I think there were a bunch of soda cans everywhere. I was asleep when it happened, so I’m probably the worst person to ask. But I know there was a bad argument, it was about cleaning the bus, and then he made some Tweet saying that he wasn’t going to be in the band, or, at least, something that meant it to us. It was right when Mayhem was ending so we just went home and started working on the CD [Matriarch] and he was just out of the band.
We had one more show. We played it. We just went into writing mode. I was already supposed to fly out to go to the studio immediately after the tour was over so I just stayed in that mind-set.
I think when he switched jobs on Facebook, that’s when everybody noticed he was out of the band. Then he came out with a statement and that was before we even knew what to do. We were gonna get a new singer before announcing that Brandon wasn’t in the band. We were planning on just putting new music out and having that be the big surprise like, “Oh! There’s a new singer!”’ So when that got out it was a lot more Internet drama.
We were planning on not working with him [before he changed his job on Facebook]. [Before that] we sent an email saying we were gonna take him seriously when he said he was gonna quit the band and that we would look for a new vocalist. Eventually he changed his job on Facebook and then that triggered everything.
I'm sure the line of thinking wasn't "oh, they are getting mad about some cans, I need to leave the band" but rather it was the final thing that set off whatever internal drama the band had that caused Butler to want to leave the band.
He clearly knew the band were going to explore clean vocals as Okubo later adds in the podcast that they considered getting a guest vocalist if Butler was to remain in the band.
Overall, it's a bummer that Butler is gone, but the band still worked through it and put out a monster record with new vocalist Lukas Magyar. How do you feel about the new tracks?
