The Faceless Announce Departure of Drummer Chason Westmoreland, Vow to Make All Remaining Summer Slaughter Dates
The Comedy of Errors known as ‘The Faceless’ continues.
After missing last night’s Summer Slaughter tour kick-off in Reading, PA — just the latest in a string of cancellations from the group — members Michael Keene (guitar/vocals), Ken Sorceron (vocals), and Justin McKinney (guitar) have released the below video explaining their absence.
According to the band, drummer Chason Westmoreland (ex-Hate Eternal) “left us high and dry two days before we were scheduled to leave on Summer Slaughter.” The group will be touring instead with a new, unnamed drummer they say they’ve never even met. Rather than play with this drummer for the first time live in Reading, the band took the day to rehearse with him. They also vow not to miss any more dates on the tour.
A few of things to note here.
First of all, even though they point out that Westmoreland isn’t in the van, they don’t say anything about the fact that current bassist Brandon Giffin (ex-Cynic) also appears to be absent. Maybe he was just laying down in the back when they filmed this or something. Vince has seen The Faceless play without a bassist before — they apparently just used a backing track instead — so maybe Giffin was never meant to be on this tour? I dunno.
Second of all, it’s odd to release this video and make no mention of the fact that these cancellations have become a regular occurrence for The Faceless. Maybe they thought no one would notice? In any case, at this point, they’ve missed a sufficient number of performances for it to be clear that either Michael Keene and company either have the absolute worst luck in history, or there’s something going on internally which we’re not privy to. I would put money on it being the latter.
And third of all, if Westmoreland announced his departure from the band two days before they were set to leave for the tour… why the heck did they not officially announce they’d be missing the first show until after this fact had already been reported on MetalSucks? Why not give fans a heads up further in advance, even if just by a few hours?
My point is, it smells like something fishy is going on here, and we are almost certainly not getting the whole story.
I’ll be curious to see how Westmoreland responds. In the meantime, anyone who goes to tonight’s Summer Slaughter show in Sayerville, NJ, hit us up and let us know if The Faceless showed up, if they had Giffin with them or not, and if you were able to figure out the identity of their new drummer.
You can get all upcoming Summer Slaughter tour dates here.
