It’s barely been more than a month since DevilDriver released their fifth studio album, Beast, but bassist Jon Miller has now announced his departure from the band.

His statement doesn’t really tell us anything and makes the split sound perfectly amiable (it’s so vanilla I’m not even gonna print it here, but you can read it at Metal Underground if you’re really curious), but Miller had entered rehab in January of this year, so it’s hard not to speculate that his new-found sobriety had something to do with his decision to leave the group. In case it isn’t obvious, being in a band out on tour isn’t necessarily the environment most conducive to just saying “no” — you will constantly be surrounded by people who are partying, and sitting on the bus by yourself is not a lot of fun.

The band hasn’t announced an official replacement, but apparently some dude named Bubbles, who used to be Bury Your Dead and is now DevilDriver’s tour manager, has been filling in for Miller these past few months, so that should pretty much take care of that.

Yep, DevilDriver now has members named “Dez” and “Bubbles.” Not since the “Izzy/Dizzy” era of Guns N’ Roses has anything been so silly.

-AR

Even before we were an “industry type” (I think we can safely call ourselves that now), I loved the fact that Roadrunner Records posts their staffers and some of the artists “best of” lists every year; these people work at/with one of the biggest metal labels out there, so it’s pretty interesting to see what they were grooving on from year to year.

The 2008 lists are on Roadrunner’s website now. Here are some highlights:

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