The Faceless have played their first U.S. show since the mass-exodus of all the members that weren't founding guitarist Michael Keene, and things did not go well.
Keene has admitted he is a recovering drug addict and former guitarist Justin McKinney has publicly outed Keene as a heroin addict. But Keene promised to clean up his act, not cancel any more shows. He found some fill-ins and toured Europe without a hitch. Everything was going well until the Bay Area Deathfest.
According to numerous reports, The Faceless showed up very late for their performance, which was promised to showcase their 2008 album Planetary Duality. The band showed up late, took forever to set up and due to all the timing issues, they only played a handful of songs, roughly half the album's running time (and the album is only 30 minutes.)
Video footage shows Keene performing solos very sloppy:
A reader submitted this first-hard account to MetalSucks:
“They didn’t show up until an hour after their scheduled set time, which I stayed for, then they took another hour setting up, just to only play 4 songs from the album. On top of that they sounded like complete garbage. They had no merch set up and Michael looked like he was strung out.
“I feel lied to and cheated. Michael assured the fans they would be there to play Planetary in full and what we got was not the album in full and it sounded horrible. Michael could barely play his guitar.
The PRP found this fan testimonial on the band's Facebook page:
“I only had to wait around for 1.5 hours after TZP finished to be able to hear 50% of Planetary Duality played terribly. This is the third time in ONE year that I’ve been burned by The Faceless’ antics (no show at SS2017 Anaheim and set so terrible at SS2017 LA that Ken was throwing shade at Keene onstage).
I sincerely hope that someday everything is turned around and I and other fans can see The Faceless play live again, on time and well, but enough with the lame excuses. It was astounding to me how indignant Keene acted when told that they were far too late to play PD in it’s entirety, and then later offering the crowd to choose what songs to hear but then overturning the decision because “[I] like Ancient Covenant more.”
I mostly feel sorry for this round of musicians that have signed their reputations over to this band. They all seem like nice dudes and are extremely talented, but I guess they knew what they were getting into. RIP The Faceless.”
The Faceless has a pretty massive North American tour starting later this month. Proceed with caution.
