Major Setbacks…

I am sure that some of you have noticed the “radio silence” emanating from all things cruxshadows (the website, Facebook, myspace, twitter etc) the past few days.  There is unfortunately, a good reason for it.
This past Wednesday the band flew back into the United States… into JFK airport in New York City.  Up until that point things had moved much smoother than we had anticipated, and after a very long tour in Europe spanning three months, we were happy to be back in the US.

I’m not sure the US was so happy to see us.

Shortly after leaving the airport we stopped to get some food.  We parked more or less in front of the restaurant entrance, on a busy intersection in Brooklyn to grab some sushi.  We locked the doors and everyone hurried inside.  In the ten to fifteen minutes that we were gone, we found that the locks to our doors were removed leaving behind large empty holes.  Everything of value, more or less, was taken.  My computer, Jessica’s computer, Jen’s computer, Zack’s computer, Cassie’s computer, Justin’s computer, & the stage computer were all taken ;Six macs and one IBM laptop PC.  They stole our earnings from the tour, some of our audio equipment, our back up drives, Jessica’s jewelry (including her silver Cruxshadows trifix), much of our data including contact information and personal information, countless iPods, and just about anything else we had.  A few of us lost complete bags with so many things of value inside I don’t know where to begin.  We spent the next few hours dealing with the police.  The speed and expertise involved lead them to believe it was not a coincidental theft, but rather an act in which we were targeted.  The persons responsible for this knew precisely what they were doing.

The impact that this has is currently incalculable, but given the difficult economic times we are all facing, we are not sure exactly how we will recover from all this.

But we will.

Like the theme of so many of our songs, we refuse to go down without a fight.  So now we are focusing our efforts on getting through this situation and rebuilding, and preventing this from ever happening again.  This may however, put some serious dampers on our plans for 2010 and quickly completing our new album.  But truly I have conceded nothing on that front either.

It will just be… harder to do.

Aside from that, I think it bares stating that although we have been in very low spirits, we are in all likelihood very fortunate.  We are all of us alive and safe, an outcome less certain given a number of other scenarios that might have occurred.

Keep us in your thoughts.  We have some serious difficulties looming ahead.  And if you live in the New York City area and hear anything about a bunch of macbooks and macbook-pros turning up under suspicious circumstances, well… feel free to let us know.

I will post again soon, but we have a lot of work to do to keep ourselves afloat…

I guess we are underdogs… again:-)

Live Love Be Believe

Rogue

ADDENDUM:  It has come to my attention that there are a number of individuals trying to raise money to help the Cruxshadows after the recent theft of our stuff.  Mostly we have seen websites linked to paypal, soliciting donations.  The truth is that while we could really use some help, we cannot in good conscience allow our fans to donate to any of these sites without warning them.  None of these individuals collecting money have coordinated any of their efforts with us, and there is no guarantee that any of this money is coming to Cruxshadows. I know that most of the people who are doing this are honest and well meaning, but it just creates a situation where the odd opportunist could take advantage of not only the band and our misfortune, but also our fans.