iStockphoto
Plenty of bands have had to deal with internal strife that ultimately led to their downfall. That includes one death metal group that broke up while traveling from one tour stop to another and ditched their lead singer at a gas station in the middle of nowhere.
Music history is filled with cautionary tales involving bands that had a fair share of success before everything came crashing down due to clashing egos and creative differences they weren’t able to overcome. The Beatles are probably the most notable example, but Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, and Pantera are among a very lengthy list of notable groups that went through a messy breakup.
It would be a stretch to use “notable” to describe Vitriol, a death metal band that formed in Portland, Oregon in 2013, as the group only has around 10,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
However, they’ve garnered enough of a following to kick off a tour that was slated to bring them to over two dozen cities across North America earlier this month until it came to a premature end when their frontman was unceremoniously abandoned by other members who decided to call it quits.
The lead singer for the death metal band Vitriol was left at a gas station after the band broke up while touring
According to NME, Vitriol kicked off its tour with some new members: Andy Vincenzetti replaced Matt Kilner as their drummer after the latter left the group over the summer, while Brett Leier filled the void that formed when bassist Adam Roethlisberger quit while touring last year.
The group performed in Queens last Friday and was slated to head up to Providence the following day before entering Canada for shows in Ottawa and Montreal.
However, things went off the rails following the stop in NYC, as guitarist Keith Merrow hopped on Instagram to announce the rest of the tour had been called off while pointing to Rasmussen as the catalyst, citing his “cowardly and weak outbursts of misplaced anger” and saying “We had to abandon him at a gas station in Vermont.”
Rasmussen addressed the situation in a couple of videos where he said he and the rest of the group had been doing cocaine for an extended period of time before he lost his temper after Merrow came into his bedroom while framing it as a violation of his personal space.
The members continued to bicker on social media, with Merrow rebuking his former bandmate’s explanation by stating he and the other members “left Vitriol because Kyle sucks. That’s it.
Ramussen said that his girlfriend and dog were also stranded with him at the aforementioned gas station (which he says was in upstate New York as opposed to Vermont) and launched a GoFundMe to raise funds for the trip back to Portland, which has raised close to $11,000 as of this writing.