Former Obscura guitarist Tom Geldschlager has slammed the band’s frontman Steffen Kummerer and blamed tensions between the pair as the reason for his departure.
Geldschlager left the band last year during recording sessions for their fourth album Akroasis, and was replaced in the lineup by Rafael Trujillo.
And he says while he and the rest of the band remain close, his name has been dragged through the mud since the split – and lays the blame squarely at the door of Kummerer.
Geldschlager tells London Metal Monthly: “I wouldn’t want to view my time in the band as an all-negative experience, even though there was tension between me and Steffen.
“My departure, however, and everything that followed are a complete disgrace to everyone who worked so hard on the album and to the fans who support them.
“I never thought I’d see my name dragged through the mud like that, or have somebody publicly try to plagiarise my work. That’s not a great place to be in for sure. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t hurt me as much as it hurts the band itself.”
He says Kummerer has tried to publicly discredit him by blaming tensions between the pair on the guitarist’s “condition” something Geldschlager calls “a new low.”
Geldschlager continues: “The only thing I can imagine he’s referring to is the fact that during the making of Akroasis I went through a tough break-up with the mother of my two kids. If he’s actually using that to hurt me, it’s definitely a new low.”
The guitarist refuses to be drawn on Kummerer’s claims that the split was amicable, but adds: “Everyone who played on the last three Obscura albums collaborated and continues to collaborate with each other in some other project – always with the exception of Steffen. Why do you think that is?”
Geldschlager says he went into the band knowing there could be trouble ahead but reports it was too good an offer to pass up.
He adds: “I’ve known former Obscura-members Hannes Grossmann and Chris Muenzner for a long time, so I’ve been in the loop about the issues within the band long before I joined.
“When the offer came to take Chris’s place in Obscura, we all kind of knew what would happen if the issues that had led to his and Hannes’ departure weren’t resolved in the new lineup. None of us expected them to get so much worse, and so quickly.”
Geldschlager will release his album The Psychic Planetarium on March 11 – a project he worked on with drummer Marco Minnemann and keyboardist Jimmy Pitts. He’s also planning on launching his second solo album under the Fountainhead banner in the near future.
