Of Mice & Men guitarist/vocalist Alan Ashby kicked off some heated debate on Twitter yesterday (January 30th) with the below tweet regarding Code Orange coming home empty handed from the recent GRAMMY Awards (they lost out on the ‘Best Metal Performance’ to Mastodon.) That initial tweet made by Ashby can be found below:
If code orange should’ve won a grammy then Norma Jean should’ve won a grammy back in the day?????
— Alan Ashby (@AlanAshby) January 30, 2018
Code Orange themselves didn’t take kindly to Ashby‘s thoughts, simply telling him to “eat shit”.
eat shit
— Code Orange (@codeorangekids) January 31, 2018
When asked by a Twitter user why Ashby made his initial comment, he told the following story of a past experience with Code Orange:
Once while watching them sidestage their bass player threw his bass then screamed at @philipmanansala to get him a new one hahahhaha so i gotta stick up for my dude! That was WACK!
— Alan Ashby (@AlanAshby) January 31, 2018
Ashby‘s bandmate, guitarist Philip Manansala, backed his bandmate up on the matter:
It’s true! The bass player from @codeorangekids was yelling at me to give him a bass on side when he broke a string on stage at nova rock. Unfortunately I’m not a tech or bass player so I was like ?????? #defendALAN
— Philip Manansala (@philipmanansala) January 31, 2018
Code Orange replied in kind:
keep talkin
— Code Orange (@codeorangekids) January 31, 2018
Ashby later added:
Didn’t realize my opinions were so important to the twitter metal community! Stay tuned for tomorrows episode of “When I Tweet My Thoughts” ??????
— Alan Ashby (@AlanAshby) January 31, 2018
Really didn’t mean for this to be a diss towards either @codeorangekids or @NormaJeanBand i’m sorry to them and all their fans stop tweeting me now thanks! ?? https://t.co/OS84XcCt8A
— Alan Ashby (@AlanAshby) January 31, 2018
Meanwhile, Sumerian Records, etc. founder Ash Avildsen chimed in, tweeting:
Norma Jean BTMAKTC is one of the greatest heavy records to utilize dissonant chords with metal/hc riffs and Code Orange does it in a fn awesome way on their album Forever. Not sure Alan’s intention with his comment but I do know there’s way too much segregation in heavy music.
— Ash Avildsen (@ashavildsen) January 31, 2018
Ashby responded to that tweet, offering:
Right! It wasn’t a diss… just pointing out the similarity (in my opinion) of music, grammy situation. But now i must eat shit 😭
— Alan Ashby (@AlanAshby) January 31, 2018
