Black Halos Break Up

09/22/09 1:17pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Vancouver punk rock band The Black Halos have broken up and are arguing about when it was truly "over."

Former frontman Billy Hopeless said the band were finished in August, according to punknews.org.

"At the best the Halos was always a band that I would have loved to go see and hear. At worse it was everything that I despise and I battled to keep it as exciting and hard as I could," Hopeless said. "I believe with the lineup I'm gathering that we will be able to achieve the same if not greater admiration from myself and hopefully all of you."

But former guitarist Adam Becvare says the band fell apart much earlier — around the time their van and all their gear was stolen in Montreal in March 2008, in fact. In an email to CHARTattack, he said the band had "never recovered" from it.

"We'd just replaced two members when our van, trailer and everything we had was gone," Becvare wrote. "As a founder, it's Bill's choice when to call it dead, but after Europe [in] June '08 my LustKillers were already touring the earth for our release Black Sugar Sessions. Not one thing has happened for The Black Halos since."

Hopeless and former guitarist Rich Jones formed The Black Halos in 1993, and the band released their self-titled debut six years later. They had a break-out hit with "Some Things Never Fall" from their 2001 The Violent Years album, and released two more discs before they broke up. Their most recent album is last year's We Are Not Alone.

Hopeless now fronts a New York Dolls/Dead Boys-influenced band dubbed The Bonitos, while Becvare plays in the aforementioned LustKillers and also fronts punk legends The Lords Of The New Church in place of late frontman Stiv Bators. Former guitarist Jay Millette is now a member of Toronto's Darlings Of Chelsea, who released an EP earlier this year.