Gorguts have held John Longstreth as a drummer since 2009, which is crazy considering Longstreth also drums for Origin. The amount of insane drum work this man has put in over the past five years is terrifying to say the least. Except now Longstreth will be putting in all that at for Origin only because fill-in Gorguts drummer Patrice Hamelin just got the gig full time. It sucks, but think about the distance between Longstreth and mastermind Luc Lemay! Surely that has to be a huge pain in the ass! Hell, Lemay even mentions the distance in his statement about the whole situation.
“As far as Patrice being in demand with a lot of different projects, I could have ended up with no drummer available at all to push Gorguts. Patrice and I living close to each other, we can work on music together on a weekly basis and that’s an important factor for me as well. John and I shared on this way before our December tour in 2013 and I really insisted that he played that tour with us since he was part of Colored Sands since the very beginning and I wanted to perform the record live with the original lineup.
“All I can say is that I had a great experience playing and making a record with John. He’s a very creative, curious, polyvalent player and a great person to be around. I will miss our long conversations while driving to New York City to Colin’s place.
“It’s not a question of personality or whatsoever; it’s a question of each of us pushing our individual goals and plans as artists. I want to wish him all the best and in the end, what’s most important for me, is when we’ll see each other in 5, 10 or 20 years, we won’t be talking about not doing a tour together in 2014… we will talk about our friendship through music and how happy and proud we are of having made a wonderful record together.”
Predictable Longstreth is bummed about it, but he seems like he's staying positive and the two seem to be on good terms. Which is what's most important!
“I will not be joining Gorguts on the upcoming tours. Luc Lemay has decided to take out Patrice Hamelin for all dates in 2014. I can’t say I am not disappointed, but I respect his decision and it allows me to concentrate on Origin, the [instructional] DVD, other projects and future drum clinics/workshops. I am very happy to say that some Gorguts material will be included on my upcoming DVD.”
