According to a post on his Instagram earlier today, Andy Thomas, guitarist and clean vocalist for Pennsylvania progressive death band Black Crown Initiate, has left the band. From the horse’s mouth itself:
“It’s been a long, wonderful, crazy journey, and I’d just like to say that I am no longer a member of Black Crown Initiate. There is no bad blood whatsoever, and I’d like to thank all our fans, friends, and affiliates from all over the world. I’ll see y’all around, for sure!”
The band reposted his message and added:
“The band does intend to continue. Stay tuned”
Black Crown Initiate vocalist James Dorton joined The Faceless last month live for the first time at a show that was a complete disaster.
MetalSucks last spoke to Thomas in August 2020, when Black Crown Initiate released their most recent album, Violent Portraits of Doomed Escape. He spoke about the effect the pandemic could have on the present and future of the band.
“Musically, I think it depends. I think our band is kind of in a fortunate place in that we’re really not big enough to generate a ton of income off of the band yet so it just kind of feels like we’re in stasis. We’re releasing an album but we can’t really go anywhere, at least physically.
“It actually kind of happened at an opportune time, except for the release of the album, because we don’t really have any assets, we don’t have a van anymore, you know, stuff like that. If you were a band that had a bunch of assets, a van with payments on it, insurance, all that stuff that needed to continue to be paid for during all this, I don’t know what you would do. You would have to get really creative with generating income and thankfully we’re not there.
“It’s a very interesting time. I think if you’re a band that is really any bigger than us, you probably have some financial worries at this point.”