Sumerian Records Founder Ash Avildsen Railed Against Communism, Government Censorship, MetalSucks & More On Social Media Last Night

Sumerian Records founder Ash Avildsen‘s war with heavy metal blog MetalSucks heated up again last night, August 26th, with Avildsen calling out the blog online on X. However, while this latest entry in that feud may have served as the spark, subsequent posts found Avildsen outlining his political views and offering explanations for his divisive takes.

In addition to overseeing the aforementioned label home of the likes of Bad Omens, Slaughter To Prevail, Palaye Royale and more, Avildsen has also been involved in booking and tour promotion. He has overseen the ‘Summer Slaughter Tour‘, ‘The All Stars Tour‘ and more recently, the upcoming return of the ‘Mayhem Festival‘, among numerous other treks.

His Sumerian brand has also found him involved in writing and directing movies and television series, as well as delving into comics and more. He originally fronted the progressive metalcore band Reflux early on in his career.

The seemingly icy relationship between Avildsen and MetalSucks has deep roots dating back well over a decade, though those tensions somewhat infamously appeared to flare up again earlier this year. In April Avildsen lashed out at the aforementioned publication due to their piece on this year’s ‘Summer Slaughter Tour‘ lineup.

That MetalSucks post was titled ‘First Batch of Summer Slaughter Tour Bands Announced Don’t Hold a Candle to Years Past’, and did not sit well with Avildsen, who took to Instagram to fire back at MetalSucks, offering:

“regardless if we booked cannibal and fetus or resurrected necrophagist and cynic, you’re still a bunch of pro vaccine mandate brainwashed pharma cuck sheep bootlickers. have a good day and bow to your publicly traded owner, posers.”

Cabal, who performed on this year’s ‘Summer Slaughter Tour‘, felt that Avildsen‘s commentary being made through the official social media of the aforementioned tour was likely not the wisest decision. Avildsen‘s comments were thought to be a response of sorts to a past story MetalSucks ran regarding Avildsen‘s controversial commentary on COVID-19 vaccinations, with his opinions prompting some heated discussion online.

Whilst sharing a document (see below) last night from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg that addressed the pressures the social network faced from the U.S. government to suppress ‘certain COVID-19 content’ and the Hunter Biden laptop story, Avildsen launched into the following rant against the aforementioned publication via the official Sumerian Records X account:

“Hey you communist clowns at @metalsucks why don’t you report on this? Hey @sonymusic do you realize this schlock blog you bought is about to be sued for libel, slander and defamation? there are consequences when you hide behind corny fake journalist names and try to cause people harm.”

Avildsen‘s post led to an X user criticizing the label for taking ‘conservative’ stances in a post since deleted by the user. Avildsen replied to that:

“Nah. Freedom of speech isn’t “conservative” it’s the essence of Rock and Roll. Heavy Metal. Punk. Emo. Hardcore. Everything that makes up the “scene” we all are part of. We call out BS whether it’s the government trying to censor the internet or divisive clowns like Kid Rock. Here’s an example. We have 20 years of receipts. https://loudwire.com/sumerian-records-lash-out-kid-rock-divisive-merch-sales/“

Avildsen‘s reply led another X user to call out the label. That user said the following to Avildsen:

“Girl you can’t say anything about punk or hardcore while also using communist as an insult be fr bro you’re a fucking greedy record label “

Avildsen replied to that directly as follows:

“Communism is the enemy of punk and hardcore. Go read a book on the Velvet Revolution or find one punk/hardcore band who was against the fall of The Berlin Wall.

And for the record on communism – my grandmother escaped Stalin as a teen sneaking under a fence but the rest of her family / my ancestors were slaughtered in the Holodomor by Stalin (the Ukrainian holocaust) My grandma raised me right. Fuck the hammer and sickle.

It is so bizarre seeing young people praise communism, but I believe it’s caused by really greedy soulless corporate capitalism making the youth feel hopeless who aren’t well versed in history so they assume communism is the answer. It’s not.”

A separate exchange followed, in which Avildsen faced more criticism from a different user on X. That user responded to Avildsen‘s above comment on freedom of speech with the following:

“Real rock and punk is about revolution, changing the injustices of society and be part of a community that is not part of the status quo, nothing that a record label with a lot of money would understand”

Avildsen directly replied to that as follows:

“Hi my name is Ash. I started Sumerian. We are the only record label (to my knowledge) in this scene to openly speak out against Netanyahu and in support of Palestinian independence.

I stand by everything written inside my album “The Illusion of Democracy” from 2004 which called out all the injustices of the Bush administration and have entire songs about all of the crimes against humanity the US government committed as well as the attack on our civil liberties. There is a song from 2002 called “Life is more Precious than Land” that is about the exact cause why you have that flag and watermelon in your bio. The Likud were in power then too.

I stand by every word I sung on stage and said between songs all over the world during that era. We were the first label in the scene to give out true 50/50 record deals. I put on DIY hardcore / metalcore festivals in my late teens / early twenties in DC where I grew up with names like BREAKDOWNS NOT BOMBS that showed dying babies getting blown up by our military on the show flyers. I’ve publicly fought against censorship, false invasions overseas, the for profit war on drugs and systemic racism my entire career. I have all the receipts.

Please explain to me why you believe I cannot “understand” what the revolution inside rock and punk is because I did a good job helping struggling unsigned bands build careers. Or just say sorry for being mean without doing your home work. ❤️”

For clarity, it is unclear if the libel lawsuit Avildsen refers to against MetalSucks is the apparent defamation lawsuit ex-Bad Wolves vocalist Tommy Vext publicly threatened against the writer of this past Vext story, or another potential complaint.

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