It was just this past Monday when drummer Mark Garza announced his departure from The Famine. And just one day later, his band mates have followed suit. The Texas death metal group has officially announced that they are calling it quits. Vocalist Nick Nowell released the following statement confirming the news:
“The Famine never should have existed. I don’t mean that like when a jealous brother screams, ‘I wish you were never born!’ at his little sister. What I mean is that we came together as a group of married thirty-somethings with kids and small businesses. Our singer lived on the other side of the country. It was a cumbersome proposition, but we made it work. Most of you are familiar with the fire that claimed most of our equipment and the departure of our vocalist about a year ago. We should have never been able to make our last record, but we did. This brings us to the present day. As of this past Saturday, The Famine is no more.
In my mind, bands break up because Courtney Love kills their singer or because they can’t stand each other. Neither of those circumstances is descriptive of our situation. For us, life simply got in the way, as it often does. There is a medical emergency in my family, and I’ll be moving to Los Angeles in August to care for a loved one in his final days. Mark [Garza, drums] and Andy [Godwin, guitar] both have families for which they are the breadwinners, and Jon [Richardson, bass] has been putting off going to graduate school. Instead of trying to simultaneously satiate Mark’s drive and Andy’s inability to tour and my distance from the band and Jon’s webbed toes (sorry, Jon), we came together and decided as a group that it is time to lay The Famine to rest.
Words cannot express how thankful we all are to have had these experiences, and without those of you who are reading this right now, none of this would have been possible. So, from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank all of you for the support and kindness you have shown us for the past four years. Thank you for allowing us in to your lives, and for giving us the opportunity to connect, even though most of us have never met. You’ll see us around. You might not see the same faces or the same names, but I know that music means too much to all of us to let it die with this moniker. So, this is goodbye for now.”
The Famine officially formed back in 2007 out of the ashes of the band Embodyment. Though they were signed to Solid State Records, they made sure to note that they were indeed not a Christian metal group. Their latest release The Architects Of Guilt came out recently on February 15.
It’s a shame to hear about this since The Architects Of Guilt (the band’s second full length album) showed great potential for the group to grow even further. But as Nowell states, sometimes life gets in the way and often forces you to make hard decisions. The best of luck to the members of The Famine in their future endeavors, both in and outside of music.
