Metal Anarchy

Allegaeon recently launched a Patreon campaign to avoid having to break-up, and have had to deal with a lot of backlash, including a letter written by White Lung’s Mish Barber-Way, who condemned the band’s decision. Riley McShane has since discussed all of that on the Heavy Pod Is Heavy Cast. You can read what he said below.

On the backlash:

“We all went into it knowing that there were going to be people… We knew that they were gonna be a lot of people being like ‘fuck these guys, you are total pieces of shit for even asking for your fans to give more than they already give to you, how dare you’ kind of shit. Because the same thing happened to Ne Obliviscaris when they started theirs, so we knew there going to be internet lashback.

What I didn’t expect, which has been interesting to see to say the least, is the amount of just unfounded accusation that has been going around between those two articles. When I was reading the Decibel one I was like ‘man I feel like I should be offended by this’ but this is about a different band.

$150 haircuts and like a ridiculously comic public drug problem? Like who the fuck is he even talking about? There was just so much in it that was not applicable to Allegaeon as a band and it just seemed like he was trying to just get a few extra hits on his article by being over the top.”

On Mish Barber-Way:

“Funny story. At end of that article she was like ‘if this article offends you please feel free to contact me,’ all this kind of stuff, so I did. I actually just got off the phone with her after having an hour and a half long conversation like five minutes before I got on the phone with you guys.

She was awesome, I’m not gonna lie. It was a very good conversation. She gave me the room to clear the air, all while expressing what her points were and at the end of it, she was like ‘you know, I’m really sorry. I should have talked to you guys first about everything, I was just standing in an airport drinking wine and like writing it on some tiny website, I had no anticipation that it was going to blow up to the extent it did.’

And she was like ‘if it doesn’t bother you I’d like to write some dear gentlemen thing to kind clear the air.’ It’s very big of her, she was really cool about it. She was like ‘it was comically over the top, the article that I wrote.’

She was like ‘I was writing it as though I were speaking it to someone I was really irritated with.’ She wasn’t trying to make it a journalism piece… She had apparently worked for Vice for a long time and was like ‘that was not journalism, that was just me ranting on a tiny website and it got blown hugely out of proportion and for that I apologize.”

McShane also added that Mish Barber-Way actually recieved death threats, which led to Greg Burgress posting the following:

“Hey friends!!! Important update thing. I just learned that some people are sending death threats the singer who kinda roasted us yesterday. PLEASE don’t do that! I love the support and everything, but be kind to people!! Riley had a lovely chat with her and everything is gonna be made right. So please don’t be negative. I heart your faces!!”