Music

Amidst Alexisonfire break-up post-mortem, rumours fly that Wade MacNeil is the new vocalist for Gallows

by Nicole Villeneuve

At the end of last week, buried in the late Friday afternoon wasteland of quietly announced news, came the announcement that Canadian music game-changers Alexisonfire were breaking up.

In a frank and heartfelt statement on the band’s website, frontman George Pettit broke the news, saying that the band found out a year ago that guitarist/vocalist Dallas Green would be leaving the band to focus on his now-exploding side project, City and Colour. In addition, Pettit noted that guitarist/vocalist Wade MacNeil was recently asked to join another band and decided to pursue the offer.

“Replacing one guitar player/singer/writer was something we thought was possible, but replacing two would run the serious risk of perverting the legacy of what we had achieved. So we all took a good hard swallow and decided to end it so it would never get old and ugly,” reads part of the statement.

A sad loss, but one not entirely unexpected. Alan Cross contemplated a few obvious ‘in hindsight’ foreshadowings of the split on his blog yesterday, but plunked right in the middle like it wasn’t anything at all was the news that MacNeil was, in fact, joining UK punks the Gallows as their new frontman.

Gallows frontman Frank Carter parted ways with the band last month, and as Exclaim! points out, MacNeil’s other band, Black Lungs, have recently played shows with Gallows, so a pairing is not out of the blue. An official statement is expected from Gallows on Tuesday, August 9 (tomorrow). In the meantime, spend some time laughing at some comments from equally excited and angry fans on the Gallows Facebook page.