Black is the New Blake: As Blood Runs Black Accused of Ripping-Off Their Fans

It would appear that As Blood Runs Black have really pissed some people off — and not just because of their crappy music.

See, in July of 2013, the band launched a crowdfunding campaign seeking to raise $50,000 to record a new album. And as part of said campaign, the band made this promise to all contributors:

Just to re-emphasize: ten dollars was the smallest amount one could donate, so this offer applied to literally everyone who chipped in on the album. Sure, ABRB only raised about half of the amount they were seeking, but whatever — hey still made the album, and twenty-five grand is nothing to sneeze at. The point simply being, all 588 fans who contributed to the campaign (the 99 whom contributed ten bucks + the people who contributed more in exchange for other, snazzier items) should have received a digital copy of the album prior to its release.

One problem: the album came out this past Monday, October 27, and guess what? According to comments left under literally every thread on the band’s Facebook page…

That’s right: not only did none of these fans get their digital download prior to its release, but as of this writing, they still haven’t received their download. I mean. FUCK. I’m listening to the thing on Spotify right now, and I didn’t give ABRB a nickel. That’s not cool.

And to make matters worse, fans who paid more than ten dollars for physical merchandise are also claiming they have yet to receive their goods, despite the fact that their estimated delivery dates have long since passed.

So how did the band respond? Well…Which is bullshit. Even if there was some delay on the manufacturing of the physical merch, there’s no plausible excuse for failing to send fans their DLs. We live in the digital era — bands have walked out of mastering sessions and e-mailed MetalSucks their new album just a few hours later. Even having to upload the album and generate download links shouldn’t take that long. In a worst case scenario, you could put the mp3s in a dropbox and have a link sent out within, oh, fifteen or twenty minutes.

Of course, the fans know bullshit when they step in it: So. Now it’s October 29, two days after the album has been released. Surely, this has been taken care of by now. Right? Wrong: the comments beneath the band’s most recent FB post, published last night, are STILL full of people wondering where their copy of the album is. And by the way — that Facebook post was made seven hours after MetalSucks messaged the band asking for comment. We still haven’t gotten a response.

Will these fans ever get what they paid for? It’s almost irrelevant at this point. The band has broken the trust of nearly six-hundred people who wanted nothing more than to help a band they like make a new album — presumably, these were the fans who loved As Blood Runs Black the most. It’s hard to imagine they’ll ever give the band another cent now.