John Longstreth Leaves Gorguts
And so, Gorguts’ magical comeback hits its first real snag: drummer John Longstreth is now out of the band. But the parting of ways sounds both amicable and understandable. Says Gorguts mastermind Luc Lemay:
“I’m writing today to share with you that we will now have a new drummer sitting behind the kit for Gorguts. Unfortunately, John [Longstreth] won’t be playing with us anymore.
“When I first asked John, Colin [Marston, bass] and Kevin [Hufnagel, guitar] to join me to be part of Gorguts, rule number one, for me, has always been that each of their respective bands and solo career would always come first.
“John, having a very busy touring schedule with Origin, brought Patrice Hamelin in the picture to replace him on more than several occasions. This being said, I was not going to get a replacement for each players. Then, as tour offers came in, we ended up playing more shows with Patrice than John. Seeing the new Origin record coming along and being released this year, John is also developing his solo career with drum clinics; I was apprehending the complexity of orchestrating schedules for future Gorguts tours. Having a very busy schedule planed for 2014 already, thing would eventually get impossible to work out.
“As far as Patrice being in demand with a lot of different projects, I could have ended up with no drummer available at all to push Gorguts. Patrice and I living close to each other, we can work on music together on a weekly basis and that’s an important factor for me as well. John and I shared on this way before our December tour in 2013 and I really insisted that he played that tour with us since he was part of Colored Sands since the very beginning and I wanted to perform the record live with the original lineup.
“All I can say is that I had a great experience playing and making a record with John. He’s a very creative, curious, polyvalent player and a great person to be around. I will miss our long conversations while driving to New York City to Colin’s place.
“It’s not a question of personality or whatsoever; it’s a question of each of us pushing our individual goals and plans as artists. I want to wish him all the best and in the end, what’s most important for me, is when we’ll see each other in 5, 10 or 20 years, we won’t be talking about not doing a tour together in 2014… we will talk about our friendship through music and how happy and proud we are of having made a wonderful record together.”
Longstreth himself adds:
“I will not be joining Gorguts on the upcoming tours. Luc Lemay has decided to take out Patrice Hamelin for all dates in 2014. I can’t say I am not disappointed, but I respect his decision and it allows me to concentrate on Origin, the [instructional] DVD, other projects and future drum clinics/workshops. I am very happy to say that some Gorguts material will be included on my upcoming DVD.”
I’m a huge Longstreth fan, but this all makes perfect sense, and you have to assume Lemay wouldn’t bring in Patrice Hamelin if he thought the drummer wasn’t up to the task. And the fact that’s already toured with bands like Beneath the Massacre certainly speaks well of him.
Here’s video of Hamelin playing with Origin earlier this year:
Gorguts will be a part of The Decibel Magazine Tour along with Carcass, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Noisem. The tour starts next week! Get dates and ticket info here!
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