atalush

Hawthorne Heights has filed a lawsuit against its record label, Victory Records, and label head Tony Brummel today (Aug. 7). The band claims that Brummel's "overly-aggressive, unethical and illegal schemes and tactics," including physically threatening music industry figures and scheming against other artists, have severely damaged the band's reputation and its relationship with fans.

In February, Hawthorne Heights and Ne-Yo were vying for the top of The Billboard 200. On Feb. 28, an email from someone at Victory appeared to urge its street promotions team to tamper with Ne-Yo's sales potential. "If you were to pick up [a] handful of Ne-Yo CDs, as if you were about to buy them, but then changed your mind and didn't bother to put them back in the same place," the message read, "That would work ... just relocating a handful creates issues."

Within hours of the email's appearance on an industry message board on March 1, a second email appeared calling the first message "a joke." The Hawthorne Heights record, "If Only You Were Lonely," wound up debuting at No. 3 on sales of 114,000 units in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, while Ne-Yo's "In My Own Words" bowed at No. 1 on sales of 301,000 units.

Band members Eron Bucciarelli-Tieger, Casey Calvert, Micah Carli, Matt Ridenour and JT Woodruff claim that Brummel then signed the band's name without their knowledge or approval to a so-called manifesto, which falsely stated that the band believed it was in some type of war with artists in the hip-hop and R&B music genres, leading many to brand the band as racist.

In the suit, the band also charges Victory and Brummel with "egregiously fraudulent accounting practices." Despite sales of nearly 1.5 million units of the band's recordings and videos, Victory and Brummel claim that the band owes the label in excess of $1 million, the suit says, even though Victory has received in excess of $10 million in revenues from their sale of Hawthorne Heights' CDs, DVDs and merchandise.

he suit, filed in the federal District Court in Chicago, follows the band's posting of its own "manifesto" on its Web site, in which it describes the way it claims Brummel has treated them.

Hawthorne Heights wants the court to stop Victory from distributing its recordings, to order that the recording agreement be rescinded and to order the company and Brummel to pay unspecified monetary damages.

The complaint alleges a slew of claims, including copyright and trademark infringement, invasion of privacy for placing the band in a "false light," fraud and interference with business relations.

In a statement, Victory Records said, "The lawsuit filed by Hawthorne Heights has no merit whatsoever. Victory Records fully expects Hawthorne Heights to honor their commitment to deliver two additional studio albums to Victory pursuant to their recording artist agreement with Victory."

------------------------and the letter from the band--------------------------------------

Due to recent events we have decided to leave Victory Records. Our departure is anything but amicable. We have decided to leave Victory, in part due to the actions of the man who sits at the head of the label, Tony Brummel. Tony Brummel is a man that cares more about his ego and bank account than the bands themselves.


Many of you are familiar with the greed driven letters sent out by Mr. Brummel: his manifesto calling rock supporters to arms and virtual declaration of war on hip-hop and Ne-Yo done under the guise of a band message; as well as the street-team letter which instructed people to re-arrange our CDs, putting them in higher visibility areas in stores. Unfortunately, the head of street-team, Abby Valentine, who understandably resigned following the incident, took the fall for this. At the time of the letters we were branded as racists by some, all over a letter we did NOT write, targeting a genre which we have NOTHING against whatsoever. Because of these letters, our second album debuted at ..3 on the charts, an incredible feat, which would normally be cause for joy, but now is tainted much like Barry Bonds statistics.

When questioned about the letters Tony was more upset that we had told the press that he actually wrote the letters (not us) because he was more worried about rumors surrounding Taking Back Sunday and Thursdays exoduses being justified than the credibility and reputation of his current biggest band.

Couple these letters with him threatening the head program director at Q101 in Chicago for putting the new Taking Back Sunday song into rotation to the point in which the program director pulls Saying Sorry from rotation and you can see why we would more than question whether or not the head of our label cares about us or his own ego more.

Tony is a man whose greed knows no bounds. After selling more than 1.2 million copies of The Silence In Black and White and If Only You Were Lonely, we have never seen a single dollar in artist royalties from Victory Records. Tony will claim that we have not recouped, a term used by those in the music business which means the label has spent more money in advertising than has been made by CD sales. In fact questionable accounting practices are the culprit and we are in fact owed substantial amounts of money much like audits from Taking Back Sunday, Thursday and Atreyu have uncovered.

You may be wondering, why now? Why did they wait three years before saying something? Why did they sound happy in that interview??? Like being in an abusive relationship, we let certain things slide as we were afraid, as many of the bands on Victory are, to stick our neck out for fear of being beaten, in this case represented by the threat of not being promoted as has been the case with certain bands on the roster. Were done being abused. The reasons stated above represent the final straw in a huge pile of hay that broke our backs.

Undoubtedly Tony will proclaim that we are ungrateful and our success was due solely to his promotional efforts. In reality, promotion is only a portion of the equation in a bands success. Even then, in our case especially, promotional efforts can be attributed to the hard work of the band and staff at Victory, many of whom recently resigned or were fired due to differences with Tony. Non-stop touring, dedicated fans and songs (we challenge Tony to sell over 1 million blank CDs) account for the rest of the equation.

Weve accomplished more in three years than most bands do in a lifetime and for that we are extremely grateful and consider ourselves very fortunate. Our situation with Tony Brummel is indicative of issues that all bands on Victory Records encounter on some level or another.

We have decided to remove ourselves from the negative situation so that we can continue to do what we love best and focus on writing and playing music to people that care about what we have created.

Hawthorne Heights

--------------------------

I'm not a fan, but GO HH!