Both the metal blogosphere and the owner of Upon a Burning Body’s label got up in arms about frontman Danny Leal’s disappearing stunt. And while the band at first didn’t address it at all, and then seemed relatively unapologetic about it, none of that seems to have mattered, as the band garnered the best debut of their career with their fourth album, The World is my Enemy Now. But even though the band might be more popular than they’ve ever been, they still don’t appear to have garnered the goodwill of the industry. That much is apparent from Jamey Jasta’s most recent podcast when both Jasta and his guest, Frankie Palmeri of Emmure, weighed in on Leal’s disappearing act. Jasta went first, stating:
“This is not a light subject because when you create a hoax like this, and 911 or any of these missing person lines… I guess this band is from Texas, wherever the town is they’re from, thousands of people called in trying to give information on this guys whereabouts. So people who actually have real missing kids, people who actually have real open missing persons cases—their case gets overlooked. Their workers devote their time on calls dealing this guy when he’s not even really missing…”
Palmeri agreed, saying:
“Here’s my opinion on the whole thing. I don’t hate on people who do things to hype up their record whether it be putting out a crazy shirt, or making crazy lyrics, doing something that at least has some integrity to it. To cry wolf about being kidnapped is low class. If you respect that band or that person after the fact, you gotta get your head checked.
Cause it takes a special kind of, like I said ‘low class’ to pull on the heartstrings of people. Not even really… If he was just like maybe like ‘fuck my band I fucking quit’ or just some crazy shit like that, and lied about that, alright fine whatever, cool I get it. But to really do something like that is a genuine concern and causes people to really have deep feeling, where they really feel like dread for something, is terrible.”
Also on the podcast, Palmeri spoke about the now-squashed beef between him and The Acacia Strain frontman Vincent Bennett that dated back to 2009:
“Here’s really how that played out, from the top as short as I can make it, is we were cool. Literally he would come to our shows and like mosh, he thought we were dope. We were fans-we’re still fans now, just to put it out of the way, I still dig the band and ya know, cool guys and everything.
But the relationship went from like us being cool to hearing him talk shit about us. I’m not the kind of person to run my mouth about really anybody, ever, especially if I don’t have a reason to. That’s just how I am. But anyways, everywhere I went ‘oh Vince said this about you’ and I was like, ‘yeah, really don’t care.’ And then they had written a song which everyone was like ‘yo, that song is about you guys’, like 110%.
And so you know, I was like ok, I’m gonna basically get on your level and top you and just completely dis you even harder. And I did it by mentioning a fellatio experience with his now current wife.
That’s where the lyric came from, and so it comes from a personal place for me. So to me its like if you’re offended by that, you’re just looking for a reason to get riled up and truthfully you’re just that bored. That’s the long story short and now we’re cool and when we see each other we say what’s up.
I left the part out we did get into a fistfight at Northern Lights around the same time the album had dropped and I have a scar on my nipple from it and everything, but I won’t… [get into that.]”
It seems like both Leal’s disappearance and Palmeri and Bennett’s beef were successful publicity stunts. Emmure and The Acacia Strain are now touring together, and Emmure likely sold a bunch of shirts based on the incident Palmeri refers to above. Meanwhile, fans don’t seem to be all that upset with UABB, and even in addressing this on the podcast (and on the interwebs), the band is still being talked about. Listen to the whole podcast below:
[via theprp]
