Exclusive: Nick Hipa (Wovenwar, As I Lay Dying) Says Tim Lambesis’ Crime “Wasn’t Completely Out of Character”

Yesterday, MetalSucks’ own Chuck & Godless interviewed current Wovenwar/former As I Lay Dying guitarist Nick Hipa. Much to his credit, Hipa spoke to them openly and honestly about AILD vocalist Tim Lambesis and the dramatic, traumatic events through which Hipa and his other AILD bandmates had to suffer. The full interview will be featured on this coming Monday’s episode of The MetalSucks Podcast, but we since we sincerely feel like this one of the best MetalSucks interviews ever, we wanted to share a few quick excerpts with you.

Here’s a direct quote from Hipa, regarding Lambesis:

“Any dude in a band … they are very aware of their bandmates’ highs and their lows, the strengths of their characters, and their flaws. You kind of just accept each other for it. I think even to the extent that you’re like, ‘Man, y’know, this dude sucks, but he’s got other things going for him.’ But for us, we started to see the degradation of [Lambesis’] character to [the point where it was] like, ‘There’s nothing really redeeming here. This guy is losing touch. What do we do? This is somebody that we’re involved with on multiple levels.’ And so we just tried to keep things together as well as we could, and not let any of those things ruin the band and what we had built. But when [Lambesis was arrested], I think we were surprised, [but] we weren’t shocked like everyone else. This came out of the blue for everyone else… we did not expect things to go as far as they did, but [what Lambesis did] wasn’t completely out of character.”

Some others Nick had to say about his former bandmate:

• “He needed help beyond what his friends and family could figure out.”
• “Somebody who is willing to calculate murder, that person is mindful of misusing a public platform.”
• Regarding Lambesis’ Father’s Day tweet from the As I Lay Dying Twitter account: “Stop making a joke out of yourself and our band.”
• “We have no religious agenda in any of this music.”

The full interview will be available as part of The MetalSucks Podcast this coming Monday, June 23. You’ll be able to download it or stream here, or you can just  subscribe to the MetalSucks Podcast on iTunes and/or subscribe to our direct feed.

And don’t forget that Wovenwar’s excellent self-titled debut comes out August 5 on Metal Blade. You can listen to the new song “The Mason” here and pre-order the album here.