ARSIS’ JIM MALONE MAKES THE IMPLICIT EXPLICIT
Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 1:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
Well, MetalSucks Maniac/fellow writer Carlos Ramirez as now confirmed as much in an interview he conducted for Noise Creep. Here’s an excerpt:
You recently released a press release trying to explain all of the cancellations and trouble Arsis has had in the last year. But it raised more questions and started more rumors than anything. Would you like to set the record straight once and for all?
This is really tough for me to talk about. I don’t even know where to begin in all honesty. I just want to start off by saying that I don’t have a drug problem of any kind. I know a lot of people were saying that when I released that press statement. The truth is I’ve had anorexia for the past year or so. It’s not the first time I’ve gone through it either. When I was in college I struggled with it. I finally got past then I started having a drinking problem that I fought with for years. When I stopped drinking last year, the anorexia problems came back.
I have the kind of personality where I take things way too far. For me it wasn’t about weight, it was all about control. I couldn’t control everything in my life so I fixated on my weight. At my worst, I weighed 128 lbs and that’s crazy for a guy who is 6′ 1″ tall. I got to the point where I was surviving on 500 calories a day and that’s even with the rigorous exercising I was doing at the same time. Last year I lost 100 lbs in the span of 4 months. I think doctors say that a healthy weight loss pattern is about 2 lbs a week so that should tell you how messed up I was.
Malone’s a good guy and this is a serious condition, so, no, I’m not gonna be a dick and make any jokes. We’ve had friends with eating disorders here at MS, so, again, we just wanna say we hope Malone gets well so that Arsis can continue to reign as one of the premiere melodic tech-death acts in metal today.
Read the rest of Carlos Ramirez’s excellent interview here.
-AR
Here’s hoping that he pulls his life around and kicks this nasty addiction/disease/condition/disorder.
I hope he gets better. Eating disorders are tough. I mean, with drugs and alcohol you can just quit, but you got to eat every day.
Thanks for posting this brothers of metal! Yes, I think it took guts for James to come clean about all this stuff.
Agreed. A dude having an eating disorder isn’t “the norm” so to say, and I’m surprised a lot of people haven’t gay bashed the shit out of him. I hope that he can pull himself away from his vices and get straightened up. Arsis are a great band and hopefully he’ll use the music to overcome his demons.
I said this before and I’ll say it again: James Malone is just a good fuckin’ dude. The man just put himself out there and I for one have nothing but respect for that. This is real life, not some lambgoat manufactured drama bullshit. Good luck with the recovery metal brother.
@The Mighty Fucking Quinn Says
Give it time.
arsis you’re way to trill to let some shit like this slow you down.
here’s the real website ;)
Is it just me, or does this disease kind of make sense, given the genre of music that Malone plays? E.g. the micro-controlling tendency that you need to be great at tech-death (or whatever the fuck genre you want to call the type of music that Arsis plays) seems to definitely become a personality trait of Malone’s that manifested itself in a less-healthy way, e.g. anorexia.
C’mon Axl, don’t get sanctimonious and self-righteous, because you know damn well if it was some band member of a band you hated you’d be a total dick and make a horribly tasteless joke.
Significantly less funny than a drug addiction. Hope he feels better soon.
Nothing funny about a drug addiction anyway.
With a drug addiction you have to overcome both a mental and a physical barrier, Malone only needs to overcome the mental barrier to lose the anorexia.
@PorkSpam
Yes eating disorders are tuff but drugs/alcohol you can’t just quit…people need to eat everyday as a drug addict/alcoholic needs to do what they need to survive everday…an addiction is an addiction whether it be food, drugs, sex, gambling, boooze…it’s all the same…the body needs the certain substance to function daily….especially alcoholics…they need to drink so there body doesn’t shut down…alcohol is the only drug you can die from withdrawing from…your liver needs it to function….
wrong, heroin and morphine withdraws can kill you.
Here’s to James kicking a shitty habit. I have close family who have struggled with eating disorders, so it’s good to hear that it’s being taken care of.
And if it’s any consolation, Arsis are one of very few Death metal bands I can think of that have not put out a shitty album yet.
Nothing funny about mental issues of any kind really. I hope he works his way through it. Plus dealing with personal demons generally makes for some fucking kick-ass metal. (except St. Anger)