On the eve of his sentencing for hiring a hit man to kill his wife, As I Lay Dying singer Tim Lambesis spoke to Alternative Press in a lengthy interview that’s as fascinating as it is horrifying. Less important, but still noteworthy is when Lambesis, an atheist, admitted to pretending to be Christian to sell more records. At least duping thousands of fans is the only second worst thing Tim Lambesis ever did?
There are bands out there right now, playing Christian festivals, cashing the Christian checks, selling CDs in the Christian stores, who are not Christians. Maybe one or two guys are, but most of them aren’t. They will rationalize it either by saying, “I want this check,” or “Well, one guy still is” or worse, I know of one band who says, “Well, we don’t want to let our fans down, because we love them so much.”
We toured with more “Christian bands” who actually aren’t Christians than bands that are. In 12 years of touring with As I Lay Dying, I would say maybe one in 10 Christian bands we toured with were actually Christian bands. I actually wasn’t the first guy in As I Lay Dying to stop being a Christian. In fact, I think I was the third. The two who remained kind of stopped talking about it, and then I’m pretty sure they dropped it, too. We talked about whether to keep taking money from the “Christian market.” We had this bizarrely “noble” thing, like, “Well, we’re not passing along any bad ideas. We’re just singing about real life stuff. Those kids need to hear about real life, because they live in a bubble.”
Lambesis is basically Cartman but with tattoos.
