Eddie Hermida Reportedly Says the All Shall Perish Reunion Is “Not Happening”
There was a time… seems like it wasn’t so long ago!… when I would have argued that All Shall Perish were one of the most promising young death metal bands on the scene today. But it’s been a rough decade for us fans of the band.
To review: All Shall Perish’s last album, This is Where it Ends (boy that title seems appropriate now!), came out in 2011. In 2013, vocalist Eddie Hermida joined Suicide Silence, and although he planned to front both bands, the band’s then-bassist, Mike Tiner, claimed that Suicide Silence’s management gave ASP a list of rules which were sufficiently restrictive that they had no choice but to fire Hermida. In 2015, the band looked as though they were getting ready to release a new album, reportedly entitled The Rotting King. But mere days later, it was revealed that the band’s original drummer, Matt Kuykendall, had won a lawsuit against Tiner, thus giving him ownership over the All Shall Perish name. Subsequently, it was announced that the band with move forward with an amalgamation of the line-ups that made ASP’s two first albums, Hate, Malice, Revenge (2003) and The Price of Existence (2006). This version of the band would include Kuykendall, Hermida AND his predecessor, Craig Betit, on vocals, along with guitarists Ben Orum and Chris Storey and bassist Caysen Russo. A year later, we heard that the band was working on new material. And then, a year ago — almost to the day — the band posted this message on Facebook:
“ASP is not dead. We have some challenges to deal with, but new music is being created. Thank you to all of our loyal fans who still write to us every day!”
As of this writing, that was the last update to ASP’s FB page.
Which brings us to today, when Lambgoat reported this heartbreaking bit of news:
“[Vo]calist Eddie Hermida now suggests that the reunion is effectively dead. Over the weekend Hermida was asked for an All Shall Perish update, to which he responded, ‘not happening, bro. Sorry. I tried really hard but it takes a whole band to want it.’”
It’s not clear where this exchange took place, but I trust Lambgoat. If they say it happened, it happened.
This is a MAJOR bummer. The only real silver lining is that you can never really say never… by which I mean, the band members could, of course, change their mind at some point. Who knows if that will ever happen, but I know a lot of us will continue to hope it does.
