Black Crown Initiate Robbed of Money and Personal Belongings in… St. Louis, Where Else

What the fuck is it with St. Louis? It seems that almost every time we hear of a band getting robbed on the road it happened in St. Louis; Jeff Loomis, Eyehategod, Rivers of Nihil, Yautja and Traitors are just a few of the bands whose vans were burglarized in St. Louis in recent years — often in broad daylight — and those are just the metal acts! Unfortunately we can now add Black Crown Inititate to that list as well.

I’ve seen some posts floating around the web wondering aloud whether there’s a conspiracy with the St. Louis venue Fubar and/or the city police, and although that seems a bit far fetched to me… something highly organized is clearly going on here. But that’s a topic for a different day.

In any case, Black Crown Initiate’s van was broken into last night while they were eating dinner in a restaurant. They described the parking lot as “well lit” and were only in the restaurant for 40 minutes. What the fuck! Here’s their Facebook post about what went down:

God damn, to say this sucks would be a massive, massive understatement — it’s devastating! Their entire European tour with Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya and Volumes is now in jeopardy — one on which they would probably lose money anyway, as most bands touring Europe for the first time do — and to top that off they lost all the money they made on this recently completed run as well. In addition to losing personal stuff and valuable equipment, the hassle and stress of expediting new passports… Ugh, just horrible.

The band has set up an IndieGogo campaign to help them get back on their feet, and amazingly they’ve already raised nearly $8,000 in the few hours since the campaign has launched. Hooray for the metal community coming together! Fuck yeah. Donate if you can! Their goal of $12k seems very achievable, and that would be incredible.

Finally, in case it doesn’t go without saying: BANDS, NEVER EVER EVER EVER LEAVE ANYTHING OF VALUE IN THE VAN!!!! NEVER!