“I hurt every single person in my life. People who loved me, people who cared for me, people who knew me and spent substantial parts of their life with me. I hurt many of them to a devastating degree.”
Those are the words of Tim Lambesis, the embattled vocalist for Christian metalcore band As I Lay Dying, that open up a new 15-minute documentary on the group, titled Misery Evoking. The film was produced by August Burns Red frontman Jake Luhrs’ outreach organization Heart Support, and details a lot of the turmoil the band has gone through in recent years. In 2014, Lambesis was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to paying an undercover San Diego police officer posing as a hitman to kill his wife. The singer was released in December 2016 on parole, and the band resumed activity in 2018.
The documentary tangles with a lot of the questions fans have been asking in regards to the band’s controversial re-formation and the genuineness of Lambesis’ regrets over his actions. The vocalist opens up about how prison afforded him the opportunity to become a licensed case manager at an addiction recovery center. The rest of the band discusses how Lambesis’ attitude right before his arrest affected everybody in the group, causing them all to drift apart. Even so, they were all left with a desire to fix their respective relationships with the singer.
As they tell it, they were later surprised that, in their view, Lambesis took responsibility and expressed real remorse for his actions, and they saw him using his platform for good and to help others. After he opened up about where he was in his life and apologized for his actions and the hurt he brought everyone else, the other AILD members decided to regroup as a band, and to use the group as a platform to help young people in need. Watch the doc in full below, and come to your own conclusions.
