Just a little over a month ago, Denver prog/death metal band Allegaeon released Proponent for Sentience, their fourth album. Everyone liked it, and it was their biggest debut yet. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to prevent bassist Corey Archuleta from exiting the band, partially due to the fact that he wasn’t making money doing it. That’s a reality for the rest of the band as well, as they’ve launched a Patreon page to essentially keep the band in business.
The band explains that they’re in debt, and that much of the money the band makes goes to the labels, which they’re not necessarily mad about, but they said that they might need to break up if things don’t change:
For some time now Allegaeon has been in a huge amount of debt and, with our new album cycle just beginning, we’ve had to begin assessing the costs of continuing to do what we do. We are looking at the very scary reality of Allegaeon‘s lifespan coming to an end.
Calling it quits is the last thing we want to do so, after much thought and contemplation, we have decided to launch a subscription based service through the Patreon platform. This is decidedly the best way for you, our fans, to be able to directly contribute to the well-being of Allegaeon and thus guarantee that we will be able to keep making music for a long time to come.
All of you have been incredibly supportive of everything Allegaeon has done leading up to this point and for that we are grateful beyond words; we couldn’t ask for a better group of people to call our fans. At this juncture, we need your support more than ever and are looking forward to working with each of you to make sure that your contribution to our success is rewarded in the best ways we can possibly offer.
What is their goal? They’d really like to make as much as the average U.S. income, or $51,939 a year per member. That’s a pretty ambitious goal for a death metal band, given that there are plenty of bands that tour 10 months out of the year that don’t make that much. However, given that rewards range from a group hug to Skype to in-person guitar lessons from Greg, if you’re a fan of the band and want to see them continue to flourish, it could be worth looking into at least. So far, they’ve raised $2,072/month, so if they just can just get another $19,565 per month and reach their goal, they’ll be richer than most musicians.
