Chris Kontos has left Forbidden, and the four musicians he left behind say they learned it from the same social media post the audience did.
Kontos published his statement on Wednesday 4 November. He wrote that he had spent a long time trying to resolve matters with the band, the management, the legal team and the accounting, and he named what those matters were: financial integrity, a lack of transparency of accounting, and business decisions he either disagreed with or was told about only after the fact. Those issues, he wrote, had become irreconcilable. He is stepping down effective immediately.
He also thanked BLKIIBLK Records, the crews, the promoters and the audience for nearly four years, said he was proud of the record, and asked for privacy.
The band's reply was two sentences long and the second one did the work. They wished him the best, then said they found out about his leaving the band the same way everyone else did, a social media post. They added that Kontos was an integral part of the album.
He was not on the stage anyway. Kontos and bassist Matt Camacho sat out the current United States tour, with Avery Thurman and Eli Lucas standing in since it opened in Las Vegas on 23 October. It runs to Los Angeles on 22 November.
Before Wednesday's show at The Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts, guitarist Craig Locicero said on camera that he loves Kontos, considers him a brother, and that nobody in the band would be doing any mudslinging.
The self titled album, their first since Omega Wave in 2010, came out on 23 October.