Huh… As I Lay Dying’s Album Shaped By Fire Has Vanished from Streaming Services [UPDATE]

(Update: As I Lay Dying put out a statement on the album’s removal on their Instagram page. They claim that shaped by fire is no longer on streaming services due to a 5-Year distribution deal that ended. The album is now under their ownership and they say it should be back up on streaming platforms in the near future. Still no word on what the future of the band itself looks like, however.)

In what might be one of the more intriguing and honestly weird twists in the ongoing As I Lay Dying meltdown, it turns out that the band’s 2019 comeback album Shaped By Fire has been pulled from pretty much every streaming service. That’s including their own Bandcamp, mind you, which is weird…

This is on top of all the upheaval within the band itself in recent days, as bassist and clean vocalist Ryan Neff, the band’s tour manager Alex Kendrick, guitarist and former Unearth member Ken Susi, and drummer Nick Pierce have all announced their departure from As I Lay Dying. In some instances, they’ve mentioned moral issues that cropped up, but in every case they’ve all been cagey about what exactly triggered the mass exodus.

Remember, frontman Tim Lambesis served two and a half years for trying to hire a hitman to kill his then-wife Meggan Murphy, but you’d think none of those dudes would have joined the band in the first place if his criminal record was the issue. So what could have possibly happened that would cause someone like Susi to say his “personal morals have recently been tested to a breaking point”?

Even the sole remaining non-convict member of the band Phil Sgrosso said in a statement via social media that he was dealing with the “bureaucracy/business” side of things before he would comment on what’s going on, so something’s clearly not right from his perspective as well.

And perhaps the most frustrating part of this whole thing is the fact that we’re all left completely in the dark as to what’s going on. No one in the As I Lay Dying camp has made any sort of statement, Lambesis hasn’t said shit, and Napalm Records has been completely silent. With a new album supposedly coming out in a couple weeks and the apparent cancellation of an entire European tour now all but confirmed, you’d think someone would say something instead of letting rumors and speculation fester online.

I’m sure this isn’t the last we’re going to report on this in the coming hours/days. I also know we once had a stance saying we weren’t going to ever report on Lambesis or AILD ever again, but this story’s gotten too big and too crazy not to cover it…