Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a real issue that makes it difficult for an actual narcissist to seek help since he or she may inevitably deny it. Signs and symptoms of NPD include a grandiose sense of self importance, a person who lives in a fantasy world and supports their own delusions, needs constant praise and admiration, a sense of entitlement, having no empathy, etc. With our present digital age it is easier to point out a narcissist as well as becoming one yourself without being aware of it. Many use social media platforms to share images of themselves as psychologists have tested this behavior to determine if extreme amounts of selfie sharing is a sign of narcissism.
With that being said, there is also nothing wrong with wanting to “be somebody” by leaving a legacy before passing away. While some rules are meant to be broken to reach your “fifteen minutes of fame,” sometimes it’s best to be patient and let nature take its course. Jered Threatin, the man behind the tentatively fake band Threatin has either fallen into the trap of NPD, purposely planned out the fake tour in hopes to get the attention he’s been receiving or, he is perhaps a genuine musician working really hard to make it having a mysterious financial backing. The evidence and constant change of events is what’s keeping our heads spinning with this story.
For one, Amoeba music has Threatin’s ablum Breaking The World listed but, the $14.98 CD is currently unavailable. Secondly, his soundcloud account exists. However, he hasn’t updated it in over a year and has a minimal following. Of course this leads to what we already know: he’s not the major rockstar his social media accounts label him as. Setlist.FM hasn’t listed him ever up until the beginning of this month. He somehow made it to IMDB, where his biography reveals he’s more than just a musician, he’s also a “future cautionary meme.”
We’ve also noted the extensive research MetalSucks went through by discovering Threatin’s fake press outlet, fake booking agency “Stageright Bookings”, fake label, and plagiarized interviews. While Threatin has allegedly been plotting this for almost an entire decade, we do give him credit for having one of the most bizarre and insane stories about a failed desperate attempt to become almost famous.
The conspiracy theories behind this “band” sadly continues to unravel making you wonder how far is too far? Between Threatin, flat earthers, to others declaring Finland and Australia doesn’t exist, it seems nothing should surprise us anymore. According to a Threatin reddit thread, there’s a story theorizing that Jered Threatin’s wife, Kelsey, is the mastermind behind all of this and Jered had nothing to do with it. It’s an interesting read and you can check the full theory here but, given that he’s potentially planned this for about 8 years makes this theory false.
Moving past conspiracies as well as supposed archived wiki descriptions, Metal Hammer spoke directly to former drummer Dane Davis, as ex-guitarist Joe Prunera spoke to MetalSucks.
Davis went into full detail on how he spent the summer traveling between Las Vegas and Los Angeles to rehearse with Jered Threatin as nothing seemed odd or questionable. Metal Hammer asked Davis to share his experience on the first night of the tour:
“It was at the Underworld in London. The venue was great, all the staff there, the sound there was awesome, everything was very professional, we had a back room to ourselves. Nothing was really too suspicious about how anything was going, up until we were playing the set.
We had two bands opening for us. I looked at the audience for the first band and there’s hardly anyone there – there’s maybe seven or eight people. I’m, like, ‘Well maybe this band’s not too popular.’ I didn’t know too much about them. We didn’t even get names for the bands so we couldn’t look up information to do research. I just thought, ‘Maybe they’re not too popular and that’s okay. I’ve seen shows like this where it’s because hardly anyone shows up until the last act.’
It only really got weird when we played and there was no one there. Three people, max. I thought to myself, ‘This is very odd. This is supposed to be a sold-out show. What’s going on?’ The whole time as the show went on, Jered kept saying, ‘This is sort of strange. I’m used to more people being here.’”
However, MetalSucks picked up another potential fake company as Prunera explained how he received a Facebook friend request last July from Lisa Golding, a representative at the alleged talent company, Aligned Artist Management. Golding contacting him after viewing his YouTube page which, at that time had less than ten subscribers and minimal views, and wrote the following message:
“Hi Joe,
My name is Lisa Golding. I am an artist manager at Aligned Artist Management in Beverly Hills, CA. We have a signed hard rock artist on our roster that is looking for a new rhythm guitarist for their upcoming tour in Europe this November. After seeing some videos of your playing I believe you would be a good fit. If you are interested I would like to set you up with an audition/meeting with the band in Los Angeles. Let me know if you are available and I’ll send you the details.
Best,
Lisa Golding
Aligned Artist Management
P: 310-770-8918
Aligned Artist Management: www.alignedartist.com“
Joe eventually flew out to LA for the audition and discovered Lisa wasn’t there. Instead, it was Threatin and his wife, Kelsey. Additionally, turns out Lisa’s Facebook is fake (big surprise!) as MetalSucks pointed out her name is also the alias for the person who was editing Threatin’s Wikipedia. Davis told Metal Hammer that he only spoke to Lisa on the phone and has never met her.
Prunera’s story is similar to Davis’ as both explained how they would travel to LA every few weeks to practice. Davis explained to Metal Hammer:
“Me and Joe both travelled from Vegas to LA. It started around June, and we travelled once a month and then it started being twice a month, right. And then at the very end, a week before we got on tour, we were there a solid week practicing.”
Both Prunera and Davis didn’t see anything strange about the rehearsals. They’ve both shared similar stories including how they were expecting hundreds of people to show up each night.
Prunera explained:
“We were under the impression that all of the venues were going to be a 1,000 to 1,500 seat venues and then as soon as we showed up to the Underworld in London and walked in the back door, it was very apparent that this was not going to be the case. Jered said that these venues were going to be 1,000 to 1,500 seat venues.”
Davis went into detail regarding Threatin and his wife Kelsey wanting everyone to remain close by during the tour:
“So we got our itinerary a couple days before we went on tour. It was a very strict schedule and there’s curfews and stuff like that, which I kind of understood – not how strict it was, but that the fact on show days we have curfews so we can get to sleep and be ready.
But I’m honestly not sure why going for breakfast was a problem. The cafe was literally downstairs, right outside the elevators that we took to go to our room. But everyone was still sleeping. So we went downstairs had breakfast and then when we eventually met back up with them, there was just a bit of conflict over that.”
Both Prunera and Davis expressed how all accommodations were paid for. However, they didn’t realize their $300 payment for the entire tour turned out to be their spending money for food and necessities.
Prunera revealed how it wasn’t until they saw the news blow up was when he and Davis decided to call it quits:
“Jered placed special emphasis on blaming the promoter and his manager, who he insisted had screwed up. Joe tells us, “I asked him if he’d tried calling them, and he said, ‘Well, I emailed them.’ I’m thinking, ‘Dude, this an emergency, you need to get on the phone and call them!’” By this time Davis had returned to the house and pressed Jered for the promoter’s phone number. Jered skirted around the issue by saying they had only ever been in contact by email, and he offered the promoter’s email address to his distressed bandmates.
Prunera continued, “We told Jered, ‘We should not be playing and should not continue on. We don’t want to be part of the media backlash until we can get to the bottom of this. There’s no reason to continue on.’ At that point, too, [the news] was all still brand new. We’re still trying to process everything and figure out what’s real and what’s not real, what’s true and what’s not true. The articles that we’d seen with more people digging up information, researching everything and doing research on my own, it became more and more clear that I needed to get out of there and that I didn’t want to be a part of this anymore.”
Prunera and Davis decided to quit then and there. “I decided that there is no point in traveling over to Germany. I had a nasty, nasty cold. I felt like utter shit, so I told them that I was going to be leaving from Belfast as soon as I can.” He would board a plane the next day, while Davis went to stay with family in Belfast, where he’ll remain until he can utilize the return flight home that had already been purchased for him by Jered. Gavin Carney, unwilling or unable to muster funds to book a new flight home and without the good fortune of family in the area, decided to ride out the remainder of the tour.”
Prunera expressed how understanding Jered appeared to be on his departure:
“Dane was the first one to let them know that he was leaving that night. Jered was like, ‘Yeah, I completely understand.’ I can’t remember what else he said. He was pretty quick to be like, ‘Okay, that’s fine.’”
However, Kelsey had the opposite mindset, making everyone question her overall involvement in the Threatin scheme:
“Kelsey was less understanding. “She was not happy. I know she was upset about the media backlash, the personal attacks and everything. She was upset.” Joe couldn’t get a good read on whether Kelsey was in on the scheme or had been broadsided by all this new information that had just come to light.”
As MetalSucks pointed out, we agree, this is one of the biggest scandals in rock and roll. Unfortunately, all of this energy including us following the story, could have gone towards something he claims himself as: a solo artist.
Read the full interview with Dane Davis at Metal Hammer and check out MetalSucks‘ discussion with Joe Prunera.
