The response from people online over the ousting of CJ McMahon from Thy Art Is Murder and the band’s decision to replace him with Tyler Miller has been completely reasonable and full of good faith discourse. No calls to boycott and certainly no loudmouthed vocalists butting their tattooed faces into someone else’s business…
Yeah, you all know that’s not the case. Ever since Thy Art Is Murder announced that they not only kicked McMahon out of the band, but that they’d also re-recorded his parts for their latest album Godlike, anti-trans assholes and apologists for the ex-frontman have lost their shit online. Amidst a sea of blue checkmarks, Twitter responses to anything relating to Thy Art Is Murder leads to complaints about cancel culture, the band being woke, and whatever the fuck else they want to continue maulding about.
Well it turns out that Bad Wolves/God Forbid guitarist Doc Coyle has something to say about this whole mess. As someone who went through a similarly shitty situation with an ex-Bad Wolves frontman Tommy Vext, he recently took some time out of his podcast to weigh in on the controversy. His suggestion? Touch some fucking grass, you nerds. (Our words, not his.)
“I feel like I have a very vested interest in this because it’s very similar to what happened with Bad Wolves and our former singer. We never fired him. We didn’t even have that power, so there are narratives that get out there that aren’t correct. But we were accused of the same thing, of canceling, and there are just a few things I want to put out there.
“First of all, you know that piece of the puzzle. It’s like the iceberg and seeing the tip of it and thinking you know everything about it. But I want to reiterate, I don’t, you don’t, no one knows what’s going on behind the scenes with these bands. So maybe you saw that one post and you go, ‘Well he shouldn’t be kicked out for that.’ And I’m like, ‘Maybe he’s a fucking asshole.’ I don’t know the guy. He might be a very nice guy. But sometimes, you know what, people in bands are assholes, they’re drug addicts, they’re alcoholics, they’re inconsiderate, they physically abuse people, they verbally abuse people, they’re unreliable, they don’t show up on time, they don’t do their job. There’s 50 fucking reasons you can be kicked out of a band.
“If you are the singer in a deathcore band, I’m sorry, but your opinion, your negative opinion against trans people. I’m sorry, they’re not against trans people, they’re just trying to save the children. Where in the fuck in your job description is ‘saver of children’? You’re in a deathcore band. Don’t you sing about death and destruction, darkness and murder? But now you’re also saving the children, ok. I must have missed those songs.
“The truth is, once you enter a conversation like that, and it’s some of what we dealt with, but now you are basically putting everyone you’re in a band with in the path of that backlash. So when we were going through what we were going through with Tommy and the markers and anti-Black Lives Matter and all that stuff, I’m getting messages and emails from Black fans and old friends, from family members. Every single dude in Bad Wolves, our parents were reaching out like what the hell is going on? So who gives someone in a band the right to say things that affect everyone else in a band? And if you don’t care about that and you’re the mouthpiece of the band and you’re saying crazy shit, and hey listen, maybe you don’t think it’s crazy, that’s fine. But saying things that are getting a lot of negative attention, if nothing else, it says to me that you don’t care how your actions affect other people around you, and how is that being in a band? Being in a band is being considerate of everyone else.”
For those that don’t remember, Bad Wolves axed Vext after he spouted off some extreme right wing views, which isn’t a crime in and of itself. But it turned out that he was at odds with his bandmates over said views and eventually got shitcanned. Eventually things calmed down and both parties reached a settlement in October 2021, but the public backlash was toxic, with terminally online people basically calling the rest of Bad Wolves all sorts of names and accusing them of wanting to “cancel” Vext.
Noting the backlash Thy Art Is Murder is getting, Coyle related what’s going on now to what he and his bandmates went through then.
“I can’t imagine the guys in the band, what their in-boxes look like right now, what the comments on their posts are. And it’s probably shit like, ‘You guys are pieces of shit,’ ‘I hope you die,’ ‘you’re nothing without the singer,’ blah blah blah, right, cause I went through that.
“So you’re saying if I’m in a band, or there’s five people in a band and we don’t want to be in a band with X certain member we’re not allowed to make that decision? You get to make that decision for us. We have to be around someone we don’t like because the anti-woke mob is going to come cancel us.”
Ultimately, Coyle called out the people calling for a boycott of Thy Art Is Murder, including Falling In Reverse vocalist Ronnie Radke. At the end of the day, he said, the very same people that cry about cancel culture are among the most vocal online calling to cancel an entire band, which Coyle says could result in lost revenues and keeping food off of artists’ tables.
“These are people that have to live. So it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s destroy their career, let’s make it so they can’t eat. And I say this right now, if you’re gonna tell people we’re gonna make it so you don’t make money, so you can’t eat, so you can’t pay your bills, I’ll, to quote an anti-cancel culture warrior Dave Chappelle, is as to say akin to killing him, killing a man when you take away his right to earn a living or a woman for that matter…
“We have to have an environment where bands can make decisions about what they want to do. But you go, ‘No, we’re going to make it so you’re homeless. We’re going to make it so you’re starving. Or we’re going to make it so you don’t have clothes,’ because we’re mad that our favorite singer’s not there. It’s fucking baby …. there’s something vicious about it, where you think it’s your band. It ain’t your band. Just because you bought the record and you got the T-shirt, it’s not your band.”
Ultimately, Coyle said he sympathized with Thy Art Is Murder, stating that he hopes they can stay strong in the face of all the criticism.
“I’m just going to say this. The guys in that band, I feel for you cause I know what you’re going through right now and I hope you guys, your resolve is strong. I think they will probably have a better hand at things than we did cause they don’t have one person with way more power going at them viciously for some months and months and months and months on end … if someone doesn’t want to be in a band with someone, it’s not your fucking business. If you like him, you go start a band with him. Why not? Go do it.”