The last few days you may have seen the news about Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. Turing acquired the rights to a drug called Daraprim earlier this year and raised the price from $13.50 a tablet to a whopping $750. The drug prevents malaria and treats toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by a parasite, found in patients with HIV. This guy is being positioned as pure evil in the press, even though he claims raising the price is the only way to turn a profit on the drug.
Now I know you're asking, what does this have to do with metal?
Well, with the story being all over the place, I stumbled upon a post made this morning by the band Nothing. The band, which tend to be on the more ambient/shoegaze side of the metal spectrum, recently signed with Collect Records, an independent Brooklyn label run by Thursday and United Nations vocalist Geoff Rickly. Here's the tie-in… the label is funded by our buddy Marty Shkreli. Here's a tweet from Geoff calling Martin his "buddy"
At Bowery for @thehotelyear with my bud @MartinShkreli after fantastic dinner at the new @Missionstfood
A+ night. Only missing @SkeeterNYC— Geoffrey Rickly (@GeoffRickly) December 28, 2014
When signing to the label, Nothing was told by Geoff that the label is funded by “an old Thursday fan that wanted to give back to music and the arts.” They had this to post when they realized the guy responsible for all this chaos will soon be profiting off of them:
Last night I read an article about this guy who was hiking up prices on some pharmaceutics that were leaving people on…
Posted by Nothing on Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Nothing strike me as a very progressive band, most recently putting out a limited edition "rainbow colored" release with all proceeds going to an LGBT organization. I'm pretty sure the last thing they want to do is be associated with this guy. We'll keep you posted on how this plays out. I leave you with this tweet of Marty's that BulletMedia found…
https://twitter.com/MartinShkreli/status/631910171242008576
