THE FACELESS TOURING EUROPE WITHOUT DEREK RYDQUIST — IS HE STILL IN THE BAND?

I was stumbling around YouTube last night when I came across some new fan-filmed videos of The Faceless on their current European tour with Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, and Gorod. And I’m sitting there watching some shitty cell phone footage of the band performing their new song, “The Eidelon Reality” (listen to a pre-production demo of the track here), and I have this realization —

Hey, that ain’t Derek Rydquist doin’ the vocals.

And so I scrolled down to look at the comments where, indeed, some other dude has asserted “that doesnt look like the vocalist,” and the dude who filmed the above video responded, “I think they got a new one and he´s much better than the old vocalist.”

So, trying to be a good detective, I went over to the band’s Facebook page to see if Rydquist had been removed from their listed line-up. And as of this writing, he hasn’t.

But there is this comment on their wall from some fan who saw them in Plymouth last night:

“incredible tonight, tight as fuck but wheres derek? had no idea he was no longer in the band, never the less the new guy did a stellar job”

Now, I know that internet message board commenters are not always the best source of information, but, I mean… c’mon. Look at that video. It’s not Rydquist.

Fans will recall that Rydquist has actually left and re-joined The Faceless once already — but I don’t know if this means he’s out of the band again or not. It’s feasible that he just had to sit out this trek for whatever reason, and that could be a temporary replacement handling frontman duties. Of course, it would also be nice to know who the heck that replacement is, be he permanent or just filling-in.

And the plot thickens still! The PRP reports that Rydquist is now playing bass with a new project called Bewilderbeast, alongside Sacha Dunable of Intronaut/Graviton/awesome MetalSucks column fame, Abysmal Dawn’s Charles Elliot, and National Sunday Law’s Derek Donley, who is also Dunable’s bandmate in Graviton. I don’t foresee that becoming a full-time project at the expense of Abysmal Dawn, Intronaut, etc., but I guess as long we’re speculating, we can wonder aloud if Rydquist has decided to focus entirely on this new outfit.

While I attempt to get to the bottom of this mess, our European readers can get remaining tour dates here. If anyone wants to (very, very politely) approach the band at their merch booth and ask them for an update, we would be happy to deputize you as temporary semi-legitimate bloggers. We have that kind of power.

-AR