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Artist News Labels & Publishers
Zex dropped by label over sexual assault claims
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 20 September 2017
Canadian punk band Zex found themselves dropped by their label, Magic Bullet Records, over sexual assault accusations yesterday. The news came amid massive media attention for the group, after it emerged that five of their songs had been mistakenly pressed onto vinyl copies of Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ album.
The cancelling of the band’s record deal seemingly comes, at least in part, as a result of the Beyonce story. A spokesperson for the label told Pitchfork that it had received several emails making claims against by the band’s guitarist Jo Capitalicide in the 24 hours after the mis-pressing news broke.
In a statement overnight, the label said: “In light of ongoing and recent accounts of alleged sexual assault tied to Zex guitarist Jo Capitalicide, the routine boycotts of promoters, venues and record stores when the band is booked or carried, and information shared first-hand by singer Gretchen Steel to the label about Jo’s behaviour in their open relationship – which corroborates one of the accounts sent to the label by a survivor within the past 24 hours – Magic Bullet Records is hereby dropping Zex from its roster of artists, effective immediately”.
Steel told Pitchfork that the claims made in the label’s statement were “absolutely untrue”, denying that she had “corroborated any story”. She also denied that there were “routine boycotts” of the band in their hometown of Ottawa, although acknowledged there are some issues there, saying: “What happened in Ottawa is just personal issues of people not liking each other, that’s it. It’s not anything else”.
In a later written statement Steel said that the band knew nothing of any accusations against Capitalicide beyond what had appeared in Magic Bullet’s statement.
The label subsequently published screengrabs of a Facebook Messenger conversation yesterday between Steel and label boss Brent Eyestone. In it, he tells her that he’s had an email that “lined up” with a story that she had previously told him about “Jo thinking that he broke that girl’s pelvis”. Adding that record stores and the label’s distribution company are already being pressured not to carry the band’s records, he then adds that he is ending his label’s relationship with the band.
“I’ve got to keep the doors open and work with a clear conscience”, he writes. “I can’t do that with Jo and this mounting shitstorm, unfortunately”.
Steel responds by saying that “he didn’t actually break a pelvis – it was just a turn of phrase”, adding that this is “the worst news I’ve received all year”.
Magic Bullet is offering refunds to anyone who has purchased either of the band’s two albums that it has released. The company has also made donations to anti-sexual violence charity RAINN and Cornerstone Housing For Women in Ottowa.
