Arizona metalcore outfit The Word Alive’s tour manager was allegedly jumped and beaten by a support act at the band’s Florida show last night.
A series of tweets posted by Word Alive frontman Telle Smith after the show allege that the band’s tour manager was “jumped” by local band Rainey’s Revenge “due to them going over their time.”
“They are lucky that they are cowards and waited until he was alone. Have fun being blacklisted from any beneficial show for life. Ignorant,” Smith tweeted in anger, going on to say:
“It will never pay to act unappreciative and unprofessional. Topping that off with unnecessary violence will end your career, good job. Don’t fuck with family”.
Support band Fit For A King’s vocalist also waded in on Twitter. Ryan Joseph Kirby wrote, “A local band jumped The Word Alive’s tour manager because he cut their set short due to them being 10 minutes over. I’ll get there [SIC] name.”
Rainey’s Revenge are reported to have left two messages on their Facebook page defending themselves before quickly deleting them. The band returned to Facebook to issue a statement several hours later.
Revenge begins, “Ok, clearly the time has come to comment on this situation that took place with us last night with The Word Alive’s tour manager. First, we would like to extend our gratitude to all our friends that have had our back and stuck up for us through out [SIC] all this. As I’m sure you all can imagine, it’s been a very interesting day to be in this band.”
They defend their decision to delete the previous two Facebook posts, going on to say: “Lets get one thing straight The Word Alives tour manager was not jumped by any of us in the band [SIC]. That was what some of the bands that performed last night just decided to say. I’m pretty certain if we straight up jumped a person especially in his line of work we would have been arrested, which did not happen. In fact zero legal actions were taken.”
In the rest of the statement, the Rainey’s Revenge allege they have never been in a violent situation like this before and that they were “irritated” at having to end their set and later provoked by the tour manager.
The band writes: “I heard the tour manager say these exact words: “just shut up and get the Fuck off the stage.” By that time, I knew about the time issue. Even after he said that, I still looked at him and got his attention and said, “I am sorry”.”
Describing the altercation, which is reported to have taken place to the side of the stage door outside, Rainey’s Revenge says, “we all started getting loud with one another” and as [“the tour manager] grew more condescending” his attitude had everyone yelling and it was actually the tour manager who threw the first punch.
“I put my arms between [the tour manager and members of Rainey’s Revenge] and pushed to try to separate them. [The tour manager] then began to yell, “he hit me!! he hit me!!” Which I did not. Then I saw him pull his arm back and throw a punch. He punched me in the face.”
According to the band’s statement, the altercation broke out into an all out fight where one of the band members was hit twice and the tour manager was also hit.
“We are all fully aware of how the internet works and are sure we will continue to receive more hate mail and what not. Trust me, we’ve seen plenty of it today,” the band say, closing their statement, before conclude with:
“One thing we want to make very clear to everyone reading this. We are not breaking up and we are not changing our name. We will carry on. It will take a lot more than having our name dragged through the mud by people whom [SIC] haven’t the slightest idea of what really went down to stop us. Lastly we just want to sincerely apologise to Vinyl Music Hall for all of this. Your staff has been nothing short of amazing to us since the first time we played there opening for Hatebreed in 2011. We cant [SIC] thank y’all enough for all the amazing shows we have been fortunate enough to play there.”
Read the band’s full statement here, below.
Ok, clearly the time has come to comment on this situation that took place with us last night with The Word Alive's tour... Posted by Rainey's Revenge FL on Thursday, 17 March 2016
https://twitter.com/ryankirbz/status/710297472850067456
