Ville Laihaila (SENTENCED) has decided that he will take care of lead vocals himself in his side project, POISONBLACK, following the departure of Juha-Pekka Leppaluoto (CHARON). Ville feels that his own vocals would be the “best choice” for the project.

A Toronto based vocalist named Christopher (COME CLOSER) has issued the following message at his official website (www.comecloser.com) regarding rumors that he is the new singer for POISONBLACK:

“I’ve been getting a sizeable amount of e-mails from various strangers, friends, and colleagues regarding the rumour that I am the new singer of Poisonblack. Today I can address this rumour once and for all.

I WAS to be the new singer of Poisonblack. I had my passport ready, vodka in hand, and ready to fly to Finland to lay the vocal tracks down on the next Poisonblack album and possibly trade anti-depressants with Timo Tolkki. Ville Laihiala and I have been communicating for 3 or so months trying to get me over to Finland to record and hash out the logistics of this possible long-distance relationship.

Here is the demo (click on the link at this location) I recorded that initially solidified my position as the singer of Poisonblack. Forgive the demo/performance quality, but I think it gets the point across.

This morning I was notified by Ville (VILLEVIL as he affectionately signs his email) that he has `decided to sing myself because the way the music is going I think my voice would be the best choice.’ Being that I am a fan of Sentenced as well, I can’t argue that Ville has a great voice and will most likely do his own songs justice.

Needless to say I am disappointed that I will not be participating with this band since I enjoy this style of music. At the same time I am a bit relieved that the whole process of `becoming the singer’ is over because of how little was communicated to me about the project:

One minute, there’s an impromptu press release on February 15th that they `recruited an as-yet-undisclosed Canadian singer.’ Being that I was the only one who sent in a demo that suffers from this affliction, the statement referred to me. The next minute, Century Media supposedly won’t allow demos of the new songs to be sent to me so I can learn them. I heard they (Century) were cheap, but not to the extent that they expected me to invest in a psychic. In the same breath there are/were festival shows supposedly booked for Poisonblack in the summer.

I should have clued in that something was terribly wrong when I received an email from Villevil with the subject line reading: Boys on Black.

It was all very...interesting to say the least and you can read about the whole experience in the thoughts section.

So now you know one of the reasons why my follow-up album to `wer Next Projekt’ has been delayed for a while. I felt it was respectful and proper to keep quiet until I either had a contract in hand or if Ville decided to publicly announce it at his leisure. Now that this has finally come to an end, I can continue recording my follow-up album due out this year and I wish Ville the best with this new album and will most likely throw down my 15 bucks for it when it comes out…Unless it sucks.

Kiitos, Christopher.”

For more, see Christopher’s “Thoughts” section here.