In 2014, Alissa White-Gluz was asked to join Arch Enemy replacing long time vocalist Angela Gossow. White-Gluz announced her departure from The Agonist and announced the end of the band as fans knew it. The Agonist, originally founded by White-Gluz, Danny Marino, and Chris Kelly, announced Vicky Psarakis as their new singer.
In 2017, White-Gluz revealed details about her departure from The Agonist citing betrayal as the cause. In a statement White-Gluz said…
“I’m not even gonna talk about them at all. They’ve stolen enough from me. I’m not gonna let them steal any more of my energy. Instead I’m gonna put my energy towards the good things that I have, which is from this point and into the future.”
The Agonist immediately responded stating that White-Gluz has been working against her former band since her firing. Psarakis, in a new interview via Rock Confidential, had this to say about the difficulty they’ve had trying to get their newest album, Orphans, released and about White-Gluz herself.
“So, basically, the main thing is that we didn’t have a label at the time. And that is for reasons aside from the music. A lot of things happen that I personally don’t deal with at all. I don’t even wanna deal with it. I’m just here to write music and sing. Some people out there didn’t want us to release this album and we just kept really, really pushing and pushing and we almost considered just releasing it on our own – which isn’t a smart business decision.
But we were, I think after six months, we were frustrated and sitting on this album that’s so good and we couldn’t do anything about it. And then finally, Napalm reached out to us and proposed to release it under a sub-label of theirs called Rodeostar. And as far as we’re concerned, we’re using all the same resources from Napalm – the same team of people, same social media outlets. So we were like “Okay, let’s do it.”
Psarakis got more specific when asked who it was that didn’t want the album released,
“I think it’s okay if I were to speak openly about it. I’m not one to cause drama but I think for anyone that’s out there and watching and kind of seeing what’s going on, I think it’s fairly obvious that the person that’s been trying to hold us back is Alissa (White-Gluz.) In the beginning, she was doing it a lot through interviews and just talking very badly about the band members.
That is super awkward for me, because this is a person I’ve never met in my life, so it’s weird for me to be talking about it. There’s no knowing how far and to what extent her reach could be to hold this band back. I definitely know some stuff that she’s done and other things are just speculation. So, I don’t wanna throw that out there, but I will say that she has been trying to kill this band ever since she was fired.”
This isn’t the first time White-Gluz made an apparent attempt to ban an artist. Late last year, the Canadian singer allegedly tried to get a photographer banned as the outcome between all parties remain unresolved. Meanwhile, the singer was seen in the photo pit with a camera to photograph Overkill and Life of Agony in NYC this past spring. Arch Enemy will be joining Amon Amarth later this month for a North American tour. Check out tour dates at this location.
The Agonist’s new album Orphans is scheduled to arrive on September 20th and you can pre-order at this location.
