Ok, so since I am in the mood to write, I’m going to give some scoop on a few things.
First off, as I posted before, I took Tormented’s site down because of the problems I was having. As I said before, the site had been hacked and indeed it was my fault. See, the site was running an older version of the web software which had a bug in it which a hacker obviously exploited. The problem was I didn’t pay much attention to it because I get these messages from the site once in awhile when some spammer tries to submit spam through one of the links. I get an email warning me that someone may have hacked the page. I read the message, see the spam, and ignore it. Problem was, I got 2 such messages that didn’t have spam in them and just assumed it was spam, and ignored them as well. So, this resulted in an intro page that displayed the hackers screen. The main page was fine. When I attempted to upgrade the software, the site crashed, and the admin functions wouldn’t come up.
So, since I was on the road I said fuck it and I’d work on it later. But truthfully, what I said about taking it down for good is more or less true. The site has been sitting idle for a long time, and just collecting digital dust per se so I thought with what happened, it was a perfect time to do this.
Now, what most of you would not know is that the band had in fact reunited. I think about 2 years ago now we had a band meeting here at my house and they were going to release a new album. In fact, Larry had the tracks worked out and I sneaked a preview version of one of those songs onto this site. Anyone remember an MP3 I had posted named “Ringworld”? This was in fact the title track of their new album but with Larry on vocals filling in until Gary would record his own version. I actually have the album in it’s entirety with Larry on vocals. Gary’s vocals still had to be recorded but the new songs needed someone to sing on them to give the boys a feel of how the songs would sound.
With the band planning a new album and a tour of the maritimes, it seemed logical to keep the website up and running until that day came. In fact, at this band meeting, I was asked to resume my duties as their manager which I gladly accepted and started work on some things but this time around there was something different. I never got the feeling that the band was “tight” about this new album or doing the band thing again. Gary’s in Halifax with his own job and wrestling school. Larry’s in Bathurst, and Mike & Al are here in Moncton. It just didn’t feel like it was going to work at all. If they were all here in Moncton I would have felt differently but with band members everywhere, it smelled bad from the start.
I did what I could and in fact went to Bathurst one weekend to hear Larry and Al jam out a few new tunes. But, in Nov. of last year, I sent Al an email and told him I just didn’t want to be a manager for them anymore. I’d help, and do whatever I could, but I did not want this official title. Why? I didn’t believe in the band like I did before and I didn’t want to end up being accused of not “doing my job” because ultimately, a part of me knew that this new album wasn’t going to happen. Unfortunately, like many Tormented projects in the past, I had a feeling it would go nowhere. I even told this to Tamara.
Fact is, their release date was supposed to be June 6, 2006 (6/6/6) and no album ever materialized. In fact, I have not heard from Al or Larry since I resigned. I emailed Gary to find out if the band was pissed at me and he told me no. He also told me he hadn’t heard from anyone for quite awhile, which just added to my thoughts about the band not going where they wanted it to.
So, really, I have no idea what the bands plans are now. Based on the last emails I got from Gary, it sounds like things are just going nowhere. Since I know my audience here is limited, if the band ever does release a new album, having told you guys about their plans won’t impact the “surprise” they wanted to hit people with.
With that said, I’d still love to be involved with them should anything materialize but if it hasn’t happened yet, I would be very surprised if it did at all. It’s too bad. I would have loved to mosh to Tormented again.
