Abbath Loses Guitarist and Drummer

There has been a mass exodus from Abbath’s solo band.

Over the weekend, drummer Kevin Foley, a.k.a. “Creature,” announced his departure from the group, apparently under amicable circumstances:

“As a few of you might already know, I’ve been busy this year playing with the Norwegian band Abbath as a mysterious character called ‘Creature’ (Sorry to disappoint you if you thought it was the amazing Baard Koldstad! hehe). For some personal reasons, I’ve decided to leave the band. Still, it’s been a great experience and an honor to play all the band’s shows so far and record the upcoming album in Sweden with [producer] Daniel Bergstrand. I’m really happy with the result. I love the songs, the sound and I’m proud of my drumming on this one.

“As for the near future, I will be touring for the last time ever with my brothers from Benighted in January and February, opening for The Black Dahlia Murder all over Europe. It will be the best way possible to close a ten-amazing-years-long chapter of my life. These guys are my absolute best friends and I have no doubt that we’ll have a lot of fun on this tour! After that, it will be time for me to move on, look for new projects and do my best to keep making a living out of music. I’m looking forward to 2016!”

We didn’t cover Foley’s departure yesterday because, with all due respect to Foley, who cares, right? Abbath is the star of the show, and 99% of the audience has no idea who the hell else is in his band anyway, and of the remaining 1%, only half of them can name any member of the group who isn’t King Ov Hell.

But then the story took a dramatic turn last night, when guitarist Per Valla also announced his departure from the band, telling Collide:

“After having played as session guitarist with Abbath since May this year, I have recently decided that it is time for me to leave the band for personal reasons. I thank the guys for bringing me along on such an awesome ride, and for all the new friends I made in the process. I wish the guys the best of luck in the future.”

Under normal circumstances, I think people would care even less about Valla quitting than they do about Foley quitting… but the two of them leaving at the same time, both under the auspices of “personal reasons,” seems, well, suspicious. At least insofar as the court of public opinion goes, it may even lend credence to the accusations leveled by Abbath’s former bandmates in Immortal — specifically and succinctly, that Abbath is a crazy pain in the ass with a substance abuse problem.

Bottom line, though? This makes for fun gossip, but it ultimately still doesn’t really matter. Abbath’s self-titled debut will still be released next month, and he’ll still headline the 2016 edition of the Decibel Magazine Tour (dates here), and Immortal fans will continue to be skeptical that Demonaz and Horgh can pull off anything with him because, y’know, he wrote all their music.

Now, if King Ov Hell quits the band this week, THAT will make this story really interesting…