Decapitated Fire Back at Earache Records’ Claims that Unpaid Royalties Lawsuit is “Garbage”
Last week news broke that Decapitated were filing a lawsuit against Earache Records, the label on which their first four albums came out, for allegedly failing to pay royalties due on those albums for the past ten years (since the deal ended). Earache Records came back with a statement a few days later calling those claims “garbage,” and saying that the issue had already been dealt with in UK courts last year and decided in Earache’s favor.
And now — shocker! — Decapitated are firing back at Earache. The basic gist: the case never went to court, although Decapitated did withdraw their formal request to Earache last year when Earache said they’d cooperate… which they never did.
Here’s Decapitated’s latest statement, just sent to MetalSucks via email:
The only thing that is garbage is the terrible failure by Earache to properly account, pay royalties and to have left us in a position where we need to pursue legal action in order to enforce our rights.
In reply to Earache’s statement – there was no court case – what actually happened is that we served Earache with a formal request for payment of what we believed to be due. Hoping to settle the matter with Earache without going to court, we agreed to withdraw the demand. The court decided nothing and did not even consider the claims. Predictably, and despite Earache’s undertaking to do so within 28 days in September last year, we’re still waiting! So we are now raising funds to instruct a lawyer to pursue our claims.
You might have also noticed that we’ve withdrawn the limited edition t-shirt/tops that we planned to sell to help us raise funds for the case. This is because Earache immediately sent us a cease and desist letter to stop us using the artwork on them, despite us having the blessing and support of the original artist who created the “Organic Hallucinosis” album cover. If only they would act as quickly for serious matters. It’s disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising, that Earache would rather waste time and money being obstructive and uncooperative instead of simply paying their bands what is due (yes, sadly we are not the only band Earache have treated appallingly and/or haven’t paid, but more on that later!) Fear not though, as we will be releasing limited edition tops with new artwork on our website (https://www.musicglue.com/decapitated) soon.
Who’s in the right here? It’s always hard to tell, but our experience tells us that this isn’t the first time a record label has acted shifty with regards to royalty payments.
More as it develops.
