Everyone besides frontman and vocalist Michael Keene quit The Faceless in March, and a few days after that Keene and his ex-guitarist Justin McKinney were publically feuding. Keene claimed if only fans knew the "betrayal and disrespect I've received in the past few months" from his former lineup, while McKinney said Keene was "shifting blame away," was stealing money from fans (which a fan corroborated), and to "fucking life together and take responsibility for your shitty actions."
Now McKinney speaks out against Keene once again in the Casting Metal podcast hosted by Fallujah touring vocalist Monte Barnard. Barnard says he approached by The Faceless about joining, and McKinney responds with "I think everyone was approached." McKinney says it's unfortunate how the lineup came to an end, but "the guy’s got a long path ahead of him to recovery. I do wish him the best."
“It’s unfortunate the way that thing went. But the guy’s got a long path ahead of him to recovery. I do wish him the best, even though I’m still salty about the way we were treated. But I’m trying the be the bigger man here. I think I’ve said all I have to say to him publicly. I don’t want to get into too much detail, because it is kind of demonizing him, and that’s just a path I don’t want to go down. AndI think the public doesn’t really want to hear it, either. It’s a long freakin’ story.”
McKinney does say though that the stories of theft are true, and that Keene allegedly accepted money to produce McKinney's band The Zenith Passage's 2016 album but never did.
“[W]hen we initially asked [Keene] to do our record, Solipsist, I was real stoked at first, because we all grew up listening to albums he produced, and we thought [working with him] was a no-brainer considering the style that we are. Unfortunately, it didn’t end the way we wanted it to in working with him. He just kind of collected our money and didn’t do anything and essentially months had passed and it came to a point where our label head was like, ‘Guys we just have to go with someone else’… so we ended up losing a big portion of money and nothing really got done [by Keene].”
You can listen to the full podcast here.
[via MetalSucks]
