Corelia Pledge to Release Album, Refund Money to Crowdfunding Contributors

Corelia, the band that collected $33,000+ in crowdfunding cash for an album they never actually delivered back in 2015, were trolled out of hiding earlier this week when Tim Ossenfort, an unaffiliated producer posing as a disgruntled former band member under the similarly-named Facebook page “Corelias,” threatened to release the finished album to the world.

The stunt smoked the real Corelia out of obscurity, and in their first public statement in years the band explained they were very sorry about the whole thing without providing any details as to why the album still hadn’t been released or the band had been silent for so long. They also said that they’d “be posting a more detailed update on the whole situation and how we can move forward in the future.”

Corelia issued that additional update late last night and, finally, we have some answers.

For starters: the band says “severe mental illness issues” are to blame for the lengthy delays, which is certainly a predicament most of us can relate to. The band didn’t stop there, though, accepting blame for their absolutely terrible communication regarding the status of the album fans paid for years ago and never received, apologizing profusely several times throughout the long message.

What’s more, Corelia have pledged to release the album, or at least “the most current state of the 90+ minutes of our album that we have access to” since certain members [the one(s) they alluded to who are struggling with mental illness, presumably] might make releasing the fully finished product impossible.

The band has also announced their intentions to make crowdfunding contributors whole, or at least as whole as possible: “We will also be figuring out a plan to give all remaining funds back to contributors.” The key phrase there is “remaining funds,” since a lot of the money has already been spent on recording, although the band made clear none of the individuals ever enriched themselves with it. Still, it’s not clear how much is left, nor how the band would go about identifying which contributors are owed money and how much they’d each get. But it’s something.

We’ll have to wait to see whether the band makes good on these promises. We’ve certainly heard this before.

Here is Corelia’s full explanation via Facebook:

“To our fans, friends and family, and everyone else who supported us over these many years,

“We have been incredibly naive and wrong to stay quiet about things that were happening in the band, which were affecting the production of the album. For the past 4 years we have been trying our best to manage severe mental illness issues within the band, and because of this, we didn’t feel comfortable talking about personal conditions publicly or how it was affecting the production of our music. We realize now that we handled these issues very poorly, and for this we’re extremely sorry.

“We are also very sorry for our poor communication about how the band was doing overall. We failed to communicate the progress we were making on the album and our album’s marketing plans. We failed to let everyone know that we were still working on everything regardless of how long it was taking, especially considering we raised money for the album by crowdfunding it. Since the beginning, it was important for us to make decisions as a band unanimously, and this as well ended up affecting how slow we were to fix anything. We are immensely sorry we made these mistakes.

“We started writing the album in 2012, and it took us about 3 years, which we privately named: “New Wilderness”. We launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise money and help us produce as close to a professional album as possible. We recorded drums, vocals, and the guitar parts. It was around this time that we started to really struggle with mental illness issues within the band, inhibiting our ability to make progress and post updates. Eventually we were able to come together and collectively agree that we needed to keep our fans updated on the progress of the album, although this was short-lived. That was in 2016 when we posted about having the bass parts recorded. Work then began on a large-scale viral marketing idea which would keep fans entertained and reassure everyone that we were still working on the album. This campaign was designed to keep going for about a year or so and ramp up, culminating into a big release of our album, which we had hoped would be by the end of 2018.

“We worked on this intensely while producing and editing the album until eventually, we decided that the marketing campaign was done, and needed to begin immediately so the fans could finally start to see something. That was when the communication started to break down. There was a point when a band member stopped all interaction with us and we couldn’t move forward. We repeatedly reached out to them hoping to get back on track, but to no avail. Then we waited, feeling that it wasn’t the appropriate time for us to make any statement, hoping naively things would get better. Eventually we came to terms with the fact that this person may never speak to us again, and that the band would have to break up.

“It crushes us that we aren’t able to follow through with a big album release including lots of artwork, promo and marketing, and all of the online interactives we had planned that we were teasing on our website and social media. We’re so sorry we let everyone down.

“When we saw that a Corelia page with a different spelling had suddenly appeared saying they would release the album, we took it seriously because of the current circumstances within the band. Having already discussed making a public statement in the past, we decided to address the situation and move forward on our plans to make things right, regardless of who this page belonged to. Going forward, if we cannot get all band members involved, we will do what we can to release the most current state of the 90+ minutes of our album that we have access to. We will also be figuring out a plan to give all remaining funds back to contributors. We only ever spent funds on things or services that were directly for the production or release of the album. None of us ever received income or used any band funds to enrich ourselves personally. Since 2010, we all agreed- all money was only going to be used for the band’s purposes, and all the work we each put into the band as band members was donated freely. We genuinely worked very hard over the 3 or so years following the crowdfunding event, though in a disorganized way, to record and produce a 90+ min album that we hoped everyone would love and we would be proud of.

“We’ve only ever wanted to do what was right by the fans even though we constantly fell short of that goal. From the beginning, we never intended to hold up fans’ hopes and contributions for so long without much of anything to show for it. We never intended for any of this to turn out this way, and for all the hurt we have caused our fans that have been waiting so patiently for anything to come out: We admit that it is our fault, we were naive, and we are very sorry.

“We will be coming up with a plan to settle everything as best as we can. Our goal is to at the very least, make sure that each contributor is sent a digital album, then put the whole album up for free on bandcamp for anyone to have, and give back the remaining funds.

“Our sincerest apologies to all our fans, friends, and family,
Corelia”