Chason Westmoreland Explains His Departure from The Faceless; Band Fires Back

Get ready to be confused.

Last night, The Faceless missed the kick-off of this year’s Summer Slaughter tour — the latest in a string of last-minute cancellations from the group this year.

Then, this morning, they blamed drummer Chason Westmoreland for their absence, alleging he’d quit the band just two days before the launch of the tour. They said they were on their way to meet for the first time, and rehearse with for the first time, their new drummer (heretofore referred to as ‘N.D.’, because we have no idea who he or she is).

Now Westmoreland has released the following statement explaining his departure…

“Okay so not that I care about the Internet… but here it is. I didn’t bail on my band. July 8th is when I told my dudes. My efforts to reach out to drummers show July 13th. It’s impossible to get Michael anywhere on time…. when I’m at his house and he’s packing a bag for tour it takes two hours. Gas station stops on tour are an hour to an hour and a half. (Michael doesn’t drive) Soundchecks even manage to be a spectacle of their own at an astonishing three to four hours. ( How long does it take your band to soundcheck?) E.J. Shannon is the best manager I have ever worked with, he makes very specific schedules that allow for mishaps and extra time losses and even he can’t get michael to a show on time, like when we were waiting to play Seattle for an hour… anyone remember that ??? That was Michael not showing up to the venue that night until after we had his stuff set up on stage at 9 pm. I watched an entire room of amazing fans wait well over an hour to watch us … that wasn’t my fault. I didn’t think we were going on Slaughter because Michael also refused to turn in the album on time and it was a contingency for the tour. So is it really my fault an entire band can’t make their first show? Fact, they’ve had almost exactly three weeks, so there ya go.”

…a version of events which, in an exchange which seems to have since been deleted, The Faceless dispute… uh… sort of:

Um… what? Something here makes no sense.

In The Faceless’ retort, no one denies Westmoreland initially quit the band on July 8. The Faceless allege that he re-joined and re-quit the band sometime around July 23. In any case, even in their version of the story, Westmoreland was definitively out of the band for roughly three weeks, from July 8 to somewhere in the ballpark of July 23.

So… during that time… who were they planning on having play drums for them?

Maybe it was the new person, N.D. Maybe Westmoreland quit, they hired N.D., Westmoreland offered to come back, they fired N.D., Westmoreland quit again, and they re-hired N.D. That would be weird, but let’s pretend that’s what happened. Why would they still have not met or rehearsed with N.D. prior to yesterday? Why did they have to miss a show to make that happen? If as recently as last week they thought Westmoreland wasn’t doing the tour, shouldn’t they have been rehearsing with someone? Isn’t the best case scenario in their telling of this conflict that they are extremely poor planners?

You see what I’m getting at. There might actually be an explanation for why this is all Westmoreland’s fault, as The Faceless allege… but if there is, it is an extremely, extremely convoluted explanation.

Again: either The Faceless have the worst luck imaginable, or there’s part of the story we’re not being told. Just putting that out there.

Thanks: jd