Corelia Trolled Out of Hiding
Corelia, the band that made off with $33,000+ in crowdfunding cash for an album they never actually delivered, have been trolled out of hiding, updating their Facebook page for the first time since October of 2016 to respond to accusations leveled by a member of their band… who, it turns out, was not really a member of their band.
For those of you who need a reminder, since this scandal has now been dragged out over five years…
In January of 2015, the young, extremely promising prog metal band, Corelia, launched an Indiegogo campaign to crowdfund their eagerly-anticipated full-length debut. Their goal was to raise $15,000 goal; the campaign was tremendously successful, though, and the band ultimately ended up raising a whopping $33,455.
Unfortunately, in October of 2016 — nearly two years after launching the crowdfunding campaign — the group still hadn’t delivered the album, or any of the customary gifts awarded to crowdfunders. While the band released a statement to MetalSucks in which they asserted that “The accusation that we’re scamming anyone in general is just not true,” the prestigious firm that works with bands such as Periphery, Darkest Hour, and Toothgrinder, dropped the group from their roster, which wasn’t a promising sign. Sure enough, by June of 2017, the band not only still had yet to give fans what they paid for, but had stopped replying to MetalSucks’ requests for comment as well. In January of 2018, some random dude on Reddit claimed that the album was about to drop, but to the surprise of no one, that turned out to be bullshit. And then we didn’t hear anything about the band again, and most of us likely assumed that they were out of lives forever.
But life is full of surprises! So. Cut to last Saturday, April 11. Someone claiming to be a member of the band launched a Facebook page for “Corelias” — with the blunt URL “Immastealyomoneypunk” — and announced that they were gonna put the album online today, Monday, April 20:
“So here’s the deal, due to inter band fighting, we never got to release our album.
“It was finished. On the hard drive. We have art ready. But due to our own personal differences we never got to release it.
“I do not have access to the original page so I had to create this one. I have the album. We’ll release it on 4/20/20. I have no idea how to rectify the damage done by stealing $35k+ from our fans but I figure this will be the logical first step.
“Thanks for always listening and im excited to take this journey with you all.”
The other members of Corelia believed the message to be authentic, because as it turns out, someone in their ranks “abruptly ceased all communication over a year ago.” So you can almost forgive them for thinking the message on the “Corelias” page was genuine. Thus, they posted this response on the band’s Facebook page:
“It has come to our attention that there is a facebook page with similar spelling to ours that has been made to represent an anonymous member of our band. Sadly, a member of our band abruptly ceased all communication over a year ago, despite our attempts to continue communicating. We believe the owner of that page to be this person, so we have made additional attempts to contact them, with no response.
“We are very sorry for everything that fans of Corelia have had to go through. We’ve only ever wanted to complete this album that we spent so much time recording and show the world our art. But, unfortunately that has been a very rocky road.
“The opinions expressed on that page do not express the views or opinions of Corelia. Any and all media owned by Corelia is not authorized to be distributed by any party or site that is not this page, the official Corelia facebook page. We will continue trying to contact them to try to resolve the situation. Going forward, we will be updating you as much as possible, and will be posting a more detailed update on the whole situation and how we can move forward in the future. Once again, we are very sorry to everyone.
“Corelia”
The punchline? The “Corelias” Facebook page was nothing but a troll. On April 19, the page’s administrator finally uploaded a “new” Corelia song to YouTube… except listen to it for like ten seconds and it becomes clear it’s not a Corelia song at all.
Earlier today, the page’s administrator outed himself as Los Angeles area producer Tim Ossenfort:
“To stop the speculation.
“My names Tim Ossenfort, I produce records for prog rock/metal bands in LA and am in a few bands. I am for sure not a member of Corelia.
“This was all for the joke not my music, but if you wanna check out some legit prog metal by someone who has never stolen 35k from their fans please go check out my bands newest song! Its not even live on Spotify yet I’m just uploading now because screw it y’all deserve tasty riffs from SOMEONE. The band is absolutely fresh on the scene Washington Nadir.”
Corelia, naturally, have yet to respond to the news, and I suspect they never will. Ossenfort, meanwhile, will get a ton of free publicity, and earn the respect of many an Internet prankster. Well played, Mr. Ossenfort! We’re so impressed, we’ll even include some Washington Nadir music here. You earned it.
Thanks to everyone who e-mailed us about this!
