Full (?) post taken from the NWN! forum:
SO - if anyone "owes" Jef, its them. They're the criminals who pretend to 'support their artists' when the first thing they offer to them is a deal that ensures they're never going to make a penny in the event that, like Leviathan did, they get huge - and then if they do anything at all to fight that or to try to release the music elsewhere, Moribund likes to send their lawyer, Mr. Neill Sussman (he's tried to sue me at least once, possibly twice, over the years for trying to work with Jef on certain projects....yet somehow none of you stone-throwers seem to take issue with that) over with cease and desist letters, threats of being dragged into court, etc.
"True. Cold. Grim. Underground Cult" or something was their stupid slogan, right? Those policies mirror a major, and Moribund's source contract that is (slightly) modified for each deal they present their artists with is literally from a Sony contract. A major label deal. Major labels are in the business of fucking bands in the ass. The only thing they do is doctor it up with stupid words that inject the cheesy / basic black metal "Satanic aesthetic" into it (like by saying at the bottom of the contract under all the legalese designed to confuse the shit out of the clueless black metal guy recording amazing music on his 4 track in his bedroom into thinking he's working with "a really professional company" by adding just above the line where they sign their lives and art away before it's even been created "In the Name of Satan" or something fucking stupid to further deceive you of the claws that are about to be sunk into you if you prove to be an earner for the company.
There is nothing incorrect, exaggerated or fabricated about what I'm saying here. Know what our contract with Jef was? One page. It stated that we do NOT own the copyrights to these songs, but in fact Jef does. That Jef has the right to "audit us" at any time, meaning we have to hand over our statements from our manufacturer or have them (that day or within two to three business days) directly email Jef a statement telling him exactly how many CDs, tapes, or LP's we've made - if he were to want to check up on our honesty. It also states that Jef retains 100% of the publishing. The only 'industry standard' we put in our deal with Jef (or any other band we were working with) was a 50/50 split on digital earnings, paid out bi-annually. In closing, it simply stated that the releases we were doing would be approved in certain quantities on certain formats on a pressing-by-pressing basis, meaning if after two runs of 500 LP's and a few hundred CD's and tapes, Jef wanted to take those records elsewhere, he had the full right to do that. Despite the fact that we've given him a deal thats got the highest royalty rate ever paid out to any metal band that I'm aware of, and we paid him for the ENTIRE PRESSINGS UP FRONT, not after they were sold.
So - you want to tell me now how and where I'm a criminal or "owe" Jef something? I didn't jump to send Jef MORE free records after we did all this for him and just out of nowhere, my friend and bandmate of nearly 20 year just up and fucking bails on us because he's catching shit in private messages from assholes like you in his PM box trying to tell him we're "bootlegging" Judas Iscariot records.
Lets spend a minute dealing in reality regarding those rumors - about the Judas Iscariot reissues - 99% of whats "out there" regarded as "fact" is .also not true - I've got the emails where Red Stream fully agreed to the terms of the deal, evidence of them being paid AND screen shots where they announced the releases on their page. Again, just because the artist doesn't like it - which was unfortunate, but he ignored a series of 7 emails from all three companies in question - AMM / RS and Elegy in the months leading up to their releases, and only after I'd literally spent $40,000 - most of it credit - to put the biggest multi-record release project I've ever been a part of into production, the guy pops up and 'demands' we stop production after ignoring emails from everyone dating back 16 weeks and he's not the copyright owner (the labels are, in all cases) so - the cruel reality of the music game is - thats not his fucking call.), which literally would've not only bankrupted my company, it would've trashed mine and my partners personal credit (and has, subsequently because of the fact that Yosuke breached contract and never paid us the remaining $12,000 or whatever he owed us and tried to - illegally and fraudulently might I add - bully us out of money by hijacking the majority of a $7,500 refund due to us from Pirates Press where - without our full consent and weeks of being dicked around and pressured by both parties - we only got $2,500 or so of our $7K back and the remainder was applied to Yosuke's five figure debt balance with Pirates Press, totally fucking us - after breaching contract by backing out of our agreement after the wheels had been put into motion and everything had been agreed to and acknowledged as a debt-due to us, down to the fucking penny. I keep extremely detailed records of this kind of shit, because I know that I'm the easiest person in the world to use as a scapegoat in a situation like this, and what resulted was two dudes I had a lot of respect for and was excited to have rekindled friendships with both literally buckled to pressure created by assholes on forums and social media pressuring them, which - honestly - I couldn't believe from either of them. (I've known both of them since I was a teenager....I recall Yosuke and I sitting in my parents basement in my bedroom in 2001 looking at the "Live Ritual" Blasphemy LPs - the first real NWN vinyl release....we've got a long, long history together, which most people are unaware of.) But, thats what happened.
So, you know who REALLY got fucked? Me and my partners. We had to close our label, which was ON FIRE. You know why we suddenly couldn't ship orders? Because we had people sabotaging our Bandcamp account (for one example) and got us shut down, completely stopping our income literally overnight. And it never was resolved. Claiming we were :"violating copyrights" or "manufacturing bootlegs", etc - and because enough people have it out for me (after I've clawed my way out of the gutter and put my life back together through doing my best to do right by people and right-my-wrongs from the past) they managed to create such a headache for the people who handle these kind of complaints and violation reports at Bandcamp that they (understandably) had to do what they had to do to make the problem stop for them. And that resulted in us literally going bankrupt in a matter of 6 weeks. This is the first and only time I have ever said all of this in its entirety (to the best of my ability) anywhere online. I'm tired of people giving us shit. Do you and people like you REALLY THINK that I'm fucking stupid enough to come back after the wrongs I did absolutely commit in my past while struggling with addiction and DO THEM AGAIN WHEN I'M SUDDENLY RIGHT BACK IN THE GAME?! Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not stupid and would never be so retarded as to have the momentum my partners and I at AMM were gaining and fuck it all up all over again. Whatever you people want to believe, the reality is that I'm not on drugs again. I love the meth rumor...fucking priceless...i despise meth. The 'Blake is a meth dealer' rumor is even funnier...meth is the least lucrative drug that carries the highest possible prison term for trafficking of a controlled substance, only rivaled by heroin - which is about 400-500% more profitable, and people MUST have it every day...thats the drug you sell if you're going to sell drugs. I don't sell drugs, because I'm good at this music shit and enjoy it immensely, and no one gets hurt. And believe it or not...I'm not a piece of shit. Since AMM closed up officially, I've gone back to my job (ironically) working at a local drug rehab, where I'm a driver and also licensed adolescent drug and alcohol abuse therapist of sorts. I'm low man on the totem poll because I'm new to this, but, you know what? I feel like I can take all this awful shit I've done and put myself and my loved ones and my fans of my band and everyone else out there who might've been paying attention for one reason or another, and turn into something good. The 15 year old kid in black thats experimenting with cocaine or opiates...but hasn't quite hit the point of no return yet...he's a hell of a lot more likely to see and RELATE TO a guy like me who's covered in tattoos and scars / tracks from years of abuse, has long hair, generally also wearing black - maybe wearing the tshirt of a band he likes or wants to like because it looks cool to him and he's impressionable - he's going to relate and listen to me a hell of a lot sooner than he's going to listen to some stiff in a suit who went to college to learn about how people like me (and potentially the theoretical young man I'm describing) tick, but he himself has no fucking clue what its like to go through the hell of addiction. I do. And my story is one of extreme highs and incredibly low lows. I basically lived my dream from when I was a kid...my life played out exactly as I'd hoped it would - I'm part of probably less than 1-2% of the worlds population who can say that happened to me...and then I threw it all away at it's absolute peak (when it was still rapidly climbing, had I allowed it to continue to by addressing my issues before I chose to let them bring me and everything around me of important down) I went from stages in Europe looking out at thousands of people and hearing my lyrics sung back at me (with my American black metal band, something no one twenty years ago ever believed would possibly happen, ever) by the crowd to a year or two later having fans that used to come to my shows in Chicago pull up on me as I pan-handled for change, because I was fucking homeless and strung out on heroin...the drug I allowed to destroy my dream-come-true. The drug that 85% of its users relapse and struggle with the addiction (at best) on-and-off for the rest of their lives. The drug that killed my previous 24 year old girlfriend while I was in a 12 step meeting 91 days sober trying to get my life together finally because she just had to have one more, even though she knew it could and very likely would kill her. Ever called your new girlfriends mom you've met 2-3 times to tell her that her daughter just died in your arms? I have. Think I didn't want to go back to being numb / drugged up after that, especially considering I was only 91 days away from the life I'd known to be my reality 365 days a year for seven and a half years without interruption? Fuck yeah I did. But it didn't happen. I had to keep going. Theres more unpleasantness and hard work I could sit here and spew at you about that - prior to finally having my own home and being happy again for the first time in nearly 5 years - I had to go through about two years and a few months of the hardest and most humbling work I've ever done for anything to get back to a comfortable place, with those kind of "bumps in the road" i described above seemingly coming at me left and right for the entire duration of that time before FINALLY things calmed down and FINALLY were back to normal. NOW - you think I'm going to fuck that up again? Really?
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