THE REVOLVING DOOR OF ARSIS MEMBERS TURNS ‘ROUND ONCE MORE

When The Black Dahlia Murder announced earlier this week that former Arsis guitarist Ryan Knight had been tapped to fill the role vacated by John Kempainen just three weeks ago, a simmering side-story went mostly ignored: apparently at some point Ryan Knight decided to leave Arsis. WTF? Totally missed that announcement, unless the Black Dahlia announcement was meant to kill two birds with one stone.

The news officially elevates Arsis to new levels of the “ex-members of” department, rivaling only L.A. Guns and Guns N’ Roses in that vaunted arena; a game of “six degrees of Arsis” would make for some mighty fine death metal campfire chatter. The departure of Knight also marks the departure of Arsis’ 597th member, so we figured we’d reach Ryan via phone* to comment on the situation**:

“My time in Arsis was fun, but frankly I’m happy to move on. No ill-will towards Jim Malone — I mean, he’s a great guy, a great musician, and I wish him the best — but the dude’s farts just smell god awful and the motherfucker eats beans for breakfast, lunch AND dinner every day. Standing in a practice space and being cramped in a passenger van with him all day long just got to be intolerable, and I decided to move on and do what’s best for my health and olfactory sanity. Hopefully the asses of The Black Dahlia Murder will be slightly more tolerable.”

FINALLY, the mystery explained.

-VN

*Not really.
**Also not really.