Broken Hope Kicked Off Deicide Tour; Guitarist Jeremy Wagner Slams Glen Benton; Details About Concert Slasher Released
Well, I think it’s fair to say that this has been a shitty, shitty day for Broken Hope.
So, first, let’s review: the band has been on tour acting as support for Deicide, and at last night’s show at Tricky Falls in El Paso, Texas, there was some kind of altercation, during which an assailant whipped out a box cutter and cut three people, going so far as to slit someone’s throat.
KVIA has now identified the assailant as thirty-year-old Jesus Ortega. Ortega has been arrested and charged with two counts of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon, plus, uh, multiple outstanding traffic warrants. (He’s probably not really sweating the traffic warrants right now, though.) In addition to the throat slashing, Ortega’s victims suffered cuts to the head and chest. Tricky Falls security apparently detained him until the cops showed up, but you have to wonder how they let a box cutter get into the venue in the first place (unless Ortega somehow obtained it from a crew member after he was already inside, but that seems unlikely, doesn’t it?). At present, the motive for the attack remains a mystery.
Here’s Ortega’s mugshot:
In semi-related news, Deicide’s Glen Benton has kicked Broken Hope off the tour — and amazingly enough, if Broken Hope are to be believed, the above debacle had nothing to do with it. This below is a Facebook message that Broken Hope guitarist Jeremy Wagner posted earlier today, and which has since been removed from the band’s FB page:
“El Paso… first a maniac wielding a box-cutter cuts 3 fans at our concert—one ear-to-ear (thankfully all the victims are going to recover), then we learned that Glen Benton is kicking us off the ‘No Salvation Tour’. It was a helluva night. Since we started this tour, we’ve had to endure Glen Benton’s constant bitching and ultimatums. He was always trying to snip our balls and demanded that we couldn’t use our fog machines and on some nights, we couldn’t use our backdrops or other production elements because he had issues with all of it. With respect to the headliner, we abided. Moreover, in efforts of friendship, good tour vibes, and because we’re simply cool fucking guys, we let Glen Benton and his band use OUR BACKLINE because they didn’t want to bring all their gear on tour!
“Specifically, we let the headliner use our cabinets and Glen Benton used our entire bass rig—head and cabinet—since his own bass head failed him early on. While we were generous with our backline, not once did Benton thank us, offer us a dime, or even lift a finger to help move anything—and he fucked up our bass head numerous times with his resetting the EQ, etc., despite us politely asking him NOT to mess with the bass tone we dialed in. Gee, with all the money and free gear Benton brags about to us daily, you’d think he’d do something about getting his own rig.
“Things got ugly in El Paso when, after we learned Benton had lost our bass rig cables and once again fucked with our bass head, so, we put our foot down and told him he couldn’t use the head anymore. Note: we still allowed Benton to use our cabinets for their show.
“That said, Benton threw an EPIC hissy-fit and immediately kicked us off the tour! He booted Broken Hope from the tour simply because we refused to let him use our bass head! What bullshit. Now, even though that lame reason is what Benton used to get rid of us, I believe there’s more to the story here. During this entire tour Benton has given BH and our crew nothing but a shitty attitude and has tried to sabotage our production every day for no good reason. Though Benton blocked us from using our fog machines, he couldn’t stop us from using our professional soundman, nor stop us from giving concertgoers an amazing and high-powered show. The fact remains—as all our show attendees have seen—we fucking handed Glen Benton his ass every night of the tour and he couldn’t keep up. Benton and his caravan of mini-van drivers couldn’t touch our live show—even on our worst night.
“Benton sent Shaun Glass a text last night, threatening to break his jaw if Shaun badmouthed Benton. Well, I’m calling Benton out right now because his bullshit is old, fake, and he ain’t scaring anyone. Glen Benton is a lazy, jealous, jaded, ungrateful, unprofessional, egomaniacal bully. He menaces everyone from bands and fans, to promoters and booking agents. How he maintains a career is beyond me. And this time, he fucked with the wrong band. Karma is a bitch, Benton.
“On behalf of Broken Hope, I’m sorry to the fans who won’t see our performances in Dallas and Austin. You all know it’s not our fault… we’d give you all a free show if we could. Thank you all for the support, for coming to our shows, for all the love you’ve given our Omen of Disease album, and for understanding the bullshit and temper tantrums we’ve had to put up with on this tour.”
Full disclosure: I have serious problems with Shaun Glass as a person. It’s also been my experience that anyone who tells you how cool is not cool. That being said, I wasn’t there, I don’t know Jeremy Wagner or Glen Benton, so who knows. I’ll be curious to see if Benton responds. If I were him, I’d just ignore the whole thing, but if I were him I also would have never burned an inverted cross into my forehead so he and I obviously have different decision making processes.
Additional reporting by Emperor Rhombus.
