As I Lay Dying: Are Phonies Running the Christian Metal Scene?

0:00 This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. This is a story about charlatans in the Christian metal community. It's about the frontman of a prominent Christian metal band who tried to hire a hitman to murder his wife. A man who squandered a second chance and whose continued violent and shocking transgressions were caught on camera. And this is a story that's also about forgiveness. It's about redemption. It's about losing your faith. And about whether or not an entire music genre built upon faith is, in fact, now populated by phonies. Because this is a story about Tim Lambesis, a notorious frontman from a Christian metal band called As

1:04 I Lay Dying. A band that I don't believe made great music, but you might, and I'm not going to judge you for it. Either way, it's not anything like the music that I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron. called Jacked and Juiced MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Just Give Me a Reason by Pink featuring Nate Reese. And why would I play you that specific slice of strangely spelled Reese cheese? Could I afford it?

1:36 Because that was the number one song in America on May 7th, 2013. And that was the day that As I Lay Dying frontman Tim Lambesis walked into a Burns & Noble thinking he was hiring a hitman to murder his wife, when in fact, he was walking into a San Diego Sheriff's Department sting operation. On this episode, fake hitmen and phony Christians, second chances, lost faith, charlatans, and as I lay dying. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. In 2014, Tim Lambesis, frontman for the Christian metalcore band As I Lay Dying, gave an interview to Alternative Press Magazine in which he positioned himself as an unlikely whistleblower. Now, in this interview, Lambesis made the claim that the Christian metal circuit,

2:41 the collection of bands whose Christian faith is a driving force in their music and their identity, the scene that As I Lay Dying had been part of for years was nothing more than a fraud. In 12 years of touring with As I Lay Dying, Lambesis said, I would say maybe 1 in 10 Christian bands we toured with were actually Christian bands. Lambesis even outed himself in this interview, saying that he'd stepped away from Christianity years ago and now identified as an atheist. So imagine that, an atheist fronting one of the biggest Christian metalcore bands in the world.

3:22 Was Tim Lambesis telling the truth? Is the Christian metal scene full of phony Christians? I should mention that Tim Lambesis gave this interview as he was about to be sentenced for the very unchristian crime of attempting to hire an undercover cop to murder his estranged wife, Megan Lambesis. You heard that right. Tim Lambesis thought he was hiring a hitman to off his own wife, but instead found himself caught up in a San Diego Sheriff's Department sting.

3:52 solicitation of another to commit murder was the actual charge. But more on that in a minute. Back to this interview with Alternative Press from 2014. In the interview, Tim Lambesis alleges that he wasn't even the first member of As I Lay Dying to lose his faith, that perhaps at least two others had done so before him. He says the band held meetings to discuss whether they should continue the ruse to continue taking money from the Christian market, as he puts it. And Lambesis also describes some awkward moments with fans, Christian fans who would ask to pray with him. Lambesis says he wouldn't actually pray along with him, but that he'd let them think he was praying. He'd say amen when they finished and all that. But in

4:37 the end, he was nothing more than a non-believer with a shoulder to lean on and a dollar to make. So again, I ask you, was Tim Lambesis, a man facing up to nine years in prison, telling the truth? and is the Christian metal scene, which includes Lambesis' band, As I Lay Dying, full of phony Christians. As I Lay Dying stands as one of the most successful acts in metalcore, an intense musical subgenre which fuses heavy metal and hardcore punk rock. And though they are named for the 1930 Southern Gothic novel of the same name by William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying has nothing in common with any work of classic literature. The San Diego-based group went through some lineup changes early on, but by the

5:22 end of 2006, the year that Revolver magazine hailed Christian Metal as the phenomenon of the year, As I Lay Dying's lineup included Lambesis, drummer Jordan Mancino, bassist Josh Gilbert, and guitarists Nick Hippa and Phil Scoroso. In 2007, the group's fourth studio album, An Ocean Between Us, released on Metal Blade Records, peaked at number eight on the Billboard album chart. That album's first single, Nothing Left, with its rapid-fire, heart-pounding drums and squealing guitars, along with Lambesis' trademark guttural scream, was even nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Metal Performance category. The 2000s were a huge decade for As I Lay Dying in particular and for the Christian metal scene in general. Christian metal bands like P.O.D. and

6:12 Under Oath were crossing over into the mainstream, playing Ozfest and The Warped Tour. Heaven's Metal, a fanzine for Christian rock and culture, which had since changed its name to simply HM, reverted back to its original, unambiguous name. It was a validating moment for Christian Metal, and a hard-fought one, too, because only years earlier, many fans had seen Christian Metal as nothing but a joke. If you think about it, the entire concept of Christian Metal itself seeks to reclaim a style of music that was deemed satanic by many in the church. In the 1980s, televangelists searched in vain for evil backwards messages in the music of OG metal bands like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. But also in

6:59 the 80s, one of the earliest mainstream Christian metal bands, Striper, met with dirty looks from conventional metalheads rocking out to Motley Crue, Rat, and Dokken. Not me, though. I was into Striper. And, you know, they're goofy. They had their matching outfits and their They're, I don't know, I want to say uncool songs, but I liked To Hell with the Devil, okay? I just did. I think I liked that whole yellow and black thing Striper had going on. Anyways, by the end of the 20th century, the goofiness that Striper seemed to embody had been driven out of the Christian metal scene and replaced by darker, heavier vibes. Simultaneously, Major mainstream rock bands who didn't outwardly market themselves as

7:42 Christian bands, bands like U2, were couching Christian imagery in the themes of their music. So by the 2000s, this whole thing, this whole Christian thing, this whole Christian scene blew open. The scene got larger and the scene had hardcore fans. Fans who were fans because bands like As I Lay Dying were Christian. That was the whole hook, being Christian. But Tim Lambesis was living a lie. He had long since lost his faith. He was not the Christian he once was, and if he is to be believed, neither were the other guys in his band. Still, as I lay dying, carried on, crossing over, touring, not only with other Christian metal luminaries like Demon Hunter, but also with the likes of Motorhead, Anthrax, Slipknot, and Slayer. Make

8:31 that make sense. All the while, Lambesis kept his secret close to his vest, so as not to lose the good faith of the loyal Christian metal community. But faith was in all Tim Lambesis had lost. By 2013, he was separated from his wife, Megan. According to Lambesis, he was not allowed to see the three young children he'd adopted with Megan as often as he would like. And then there was a looming divorce. Once that was finalized, Lambesis would likely see even less of the kids while being made to fork over up to 60% of his income to his ex. If Tim Lambesis had still been a believer, then this is when he would have fallen to his knees, clasped his hands together, and asked God why he'd been forsaken. He may have even appealed to

9:19 God for guidance for a way out of this mess. But Tim Lambesis had no faith. He had no wife. He had no family. And a man who has lost all that will do just about anything to avoid his unwanted fate. Tim Lambesis walked confidently into the Barnes & Noble in Oceanside, California. Within seconds, he found the man he knew only as Red, even though he'd never laid eyes on the guy. But Red looked exactly like what Lambesis had been told to expect. Long beard, pierced ears, older and grizzled. Some real dyed-in-the-wool Southern California biker vibes.

9:59 Red was a fixer. Red was a problem solver. Red was the guy who did the dirty work and got paid handsomely for the pleasure. And to that end, Tim Lambesis had $ 1, 000 in cash waiting in his Jeep out in the parking lot as a down payment for what he was hiring Red to do. Kill his estranged wife, Megan.

10:20 He got Red's contact info from someone at the gym. Lambesis had been asking around. He needed a trigger man. Someone who could go to her house, in and out like a stiff breeze off the coast and make it look like a robbery gone wrong. Finding someone was easier than he thought and cheaper too. 20 grand all in.

10:41 Red was a man of few words. He asked Lambesis if he had the $ 1, 000 down payment. Lambesis nodded yes. He also had some photos, a description of Megan's vehicle, her address, and the passcode to get inside her house. Lambesis was careful how he spoke. It was always a one or gone. He didn't use words like murder or kill because people listened and people talked. But outside, after he'd retrieved a file folder from his black Jeep that contained the money, the address, the code, all that, and after he'd passed the folder off to Red, Lambesis couldn't help himself. He was casually walking away when he stopped, turned around, made sure no one else was nearby, and then looked Red in the eye and said, Just to clarify,

11:30 just so you know, I want her dead. It was May 7th, 2013, and that was the day that Tim Lambesis discovered that the man he knew as Red was actually an undercover San Diego County Sheriff's deputy, who was now placing the front man of the Christian metal band As I Lay Dying under arrest for solicitation of another to commit murder. For attempting to hire an undercover cop to murder his wife in 2014, Tim Lambesis was sentenced to six years in a California prison. At his trial, Claudia Grasso, a deputy San Diego district attorney, revealed that Lambesis had sent emails to his wife, Megan, in which he wrote that he no longer believed in God and wanted to end their marriage. And in divorce papers, Megan

12:43 described a man who had become an irresponsible father, an unfaithful husband, and a gym rat. who was more concerned with bodybuilding than he was with his own family. Later, former 80s metal veteran and Dokken guitarist George Lynch, whose daughter was engaged for a time to As I Lay Dying guitarist Nick Hippa, would go so far as to allege that Lambesis had gotten himself mixed up with, quote, cocaine, strippers, heroin, and steroids, unquote. Lambesis' defense attorney did admit that steroid use had clouded his client's judgment. But the same attorney claimed that Lambesis never actually intended for Megan to be harmed and that he had in some way been set up by a third party who had reason to vilify him.

13:32 I think it's pretty clear based on the evidence that Lambesis and Lambesis alone was behind this. I mean, the sheriff's deputy posing as Red the hitman got their entire interaction on tape. But whether or not steroids had, quote, clouded his judgment, unquote, Lambesis found himself at what he thought was rock bottom, the lowest of lows. And there at the bottom, about to be carted off to prison, he had that moment of clarity that one can access when they hit rock bottom. A moment in which Tim Lambesis decided to reveal what he claimed to be the truth about the Christian metal scene. But then his own band went ahead and did the most Christian thing ever.

14:16 Because when Tim Lambesis was released from prison in December 2016, after serving less than half of his sentence, the rest of As I Lay Dying forgave him, and the band got back together. The comeback was polarizing, to say the least. The reception surrounding As I Lay Dying's 2019 album Shaped by a Fire was Their first, since reuniting with their frontman, Tim Lambesis, was anything but lukewarm. It was hot and it was cold. It was either or. Either you were psyched that this band was back, or you were pissed that Lambesis wasn't still rotting in a cell. Either you turned the other cheek, like the rest of the guys in the band somehow managed to do, or you did not forgive and you did not forget. And what about

15:08 the rest of the Christian metal community? What about the scene that had nurtured As I Lay Dying from the start? The same scene that Tim Lambesis had since called out as phony. Disillusionment and disappointment went hand in hand. Many media outlets refused to cover the album, but those that did, did so with goodwill. The online music magazine Loudwire named Shaped by Fire one of the year's 50 best metal albums. Commercially, it did pretty well too, peaking at number 50 on the Billboard 200. And number three on the Hard Rock Albums chart. Should we be surprised by this? Should we be surprised that an album by a man who lost his faith and tried to have his wife murdered was positively received by a large number of critics and fans? No.

15:55 Because people compartmentalize. People say, Tim Lambesis did something terrible, but he's changed. And look, he got remarried while he was incarcerated. Someone loves this guy, so he must be alright. People also mythologize. They say, Tim Lambesis did something terrible, and somehow that makes him even more rock and roll, and that's metal as fuck. And people love a redemption story.

16:19 As in, Tim Lambesis did something terrible, but he has seen the error of his ways, and he has overcome his demons, and we love him more because of it. Besides, Tim Lambesis was hardly the first rock star to do something truly deplorable, only to be forgiven, even rewarded, by his fans. In 1984, Motley Crue lead singer Vince Neil drunkenly steered his Ford Pantera into oncoming traffic, crashing head-on into two cars, leaving the driver of one of those cars, an 18-year-old girl with brain damage, and killing Neil's passenger, Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas Dazzle Ringley. Three years later, Motley Crue released their album Girls, Girls, Girls, which sold over 4 million copies. In 1989, Ozzy Osbourne tried to strangle

17:05 his wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, and was arrested for attempted murder. Two years later, all was forgiven when he released his acclaimed album No More Tears, one of the biggest records of his career, which included the massive single Mama, I'm Coming Home, and went on to go quadruple platinum. There was precedent for this sort of thing, just like Tim Lambesis set a new precedent when he talked about the phoniness of the Christian metal scene. Because once that was out there, a sense of doubt came creeping out of the woodwork. And it was right in the pages of Heaven's Metal Magazine, or HM Magazine. In a 2013 interview with the publication J.B. Brubaker of the Christian metalcore band August Burns Red, talked about the baggage that came

17:49 with being labeled a Christian band. And how it put you under the microscope. And how it sometimes feels like people are just waiting for you to screw up so they can call you out. In a 2016 interview with the same magazine, Steve Cabucci of the band Wolves at the Gate talked about the palpable shift happening in the scene and how the Christian metal community was quickly becoming perceived as disingenuous. Anti-Christianity, as he put it, was the new cool. And in a 2017 interview with Heaven's Metal...

18:19 Tyler Riley of the band Gideon confessed that Christian circuits and Christian music festivals were too limiting and that it felt weird to be admired by a fan base that admired you for your religious beliefs alone. As of 2019, Gideon no longer identifies as a Christian band. And at the end of the day, Tim Lambesis and As I Lay Dying just wanted to continue as a band that was judged and accepted on their own musical merit. not because of their allegiance to any particular sub-genre or belief.

18:52 Lambesis in particular stated that he wanted to make amends where possible, express my remorse, and just put my energy into something positive. But the dual controversies of Lambesis' words and actions did not wash away as easily as some other sins. These things clung to the band like a noxious odor. As I Lay Dying were finding themselves lepers not only in Christian metal circles... but in the mainstream as well. Most notably, they were dropped from the wildly popular Resurrection Fest, an annual music festival in Spain for major metal, hardcore, and punk bands. And that's when members of As I Lay Dying began dropping out too. In 2020, As I Lay Dying guitarist Nick Hippa left the band.

19:40 It had been three years, give or take, since frontman Tim Lambesis had been released from prison. and one year since the release of As I Lay Dying's Come Back Out. Then, just two years later in 2022, both bass player Josh Gilbert and founding drummer Jordan Mancino also stepped down from their roles in the band. And this left only Lambesis and guitarist Phil Scroso in the band. It also left many unanswered questions. Questions like, what the hell is going on here? Why did the majority of As I Lay Dying's lineup quit in such a short period of time?

20:18 And what did it have to do with their problematic frontman? Lambesis would soon hire replacements and keep As I Lay Dying moving forward. Even still, this only created more questions and more rumors. Rumors that Tim Lambesis' so-called redemption, how he supposedly pulled himself up from a humiliating fall from grace...

20:40 It was all as phony as the Christian metal scene that he once described. And the statements given by As I Lay Dying's departed members would serve as a premonition of sorts, a glimpse of the darkness that lay ahead in the coming days and months. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. When guitarist Nick Hippa parted ways with As I Lay Dying in 2020, he posted a long statement on Instagram, part of which read, Respectfully, I left because the story and meaning we built our reunion upon decayed considerably over time. In 2022, when drummer Jordan Mancino left the band, he also took to Instagram, writing, There have been a number of ongoing internal issues with As I Lay Dying that need to be worked out.

21:34 Tim Lambesis in the As I Lay Dying camp responded publicly to Mancino's claims of internal issues by alleging that for two years straight, Mancino had excommunicated himself from the rest of the group and had been speaking with them only through lawyers. Whether or not this is true, what is true is that three of the five members of As I Lay Dying walked away, leaving Lambesis and Phil Scroso behind. And if I'm putting money on who's the issue here, I'm putting it on the one guy who tried to have his wife murdered. Despite all this, Lambesis managed to find other musicians who were willing to play in this controversial group. Ryan Neff from the band Miss May joined on bass, and guitarist Ken Soucy and drummer

22:17 Nick Pierce, both formerly of the band Unearthed, signed on as well. Soon, as I lay dying, we're prepping a new album and plotting a tour of Europe. But apostasy, loss of faith, continued to be a theme that resonated within the ranks of As I Lay Dying. And I'm not talking about Tim Lambesis' personal loss of faith. I'm talking about the ongoing loss of faith that other members of As I Lay Dying had with Tim Lambesis. It was supposed to be another reset. Another shot at redemption's shiny brass ring. It was the fall of 2024. and As I Lay Dying had a largely new lineup. They had a new album, Through Storms Ahead, scheduled for release, and they had a new tour on the horizon. But only weeks before the new album was even out, in October,

23:08 newcomer Ryan Neff quit. And then, just six days after that, Ken Soucy and Nick Pierce also quit. And by the end of the month, Phil Scorso, who had stayed in the band through thick and thin with Lambisa all these years, finally threw in the towel as well. So what happened? Nick Pierce said he felt compelled to distance himself from the band, quote, in an effort to retain my personal health and integrity, unquote. Ken Soucy said that his, quote, morals had reached a, quote, breaking point. Personal health, integrity, morals, a breaking point. This version of the band had barely been together two years and they were imploding in dramatic fashion. Why? Why?

23:50 Rumors surfacing online speculated that allegations of domestic abuse against Tim Lambesis would soon break, and that this is likely the straw that broke the camel's back when it came to the loyalty of Lambesis' new band members. These rumors were so loud that Lambesis' third and current wife, Dani Ciara, felt compelled to speak publicly on her Instagram. In a post from October 24th, 2024, Dani wrote, I want to make it unequivocally clear that these allegations are completely false.

24:20 Danny Ciara's denial of domestic violence was taken at face value for about a month until late November, 2024 around Thanksgiving when the videos began to leak online. Security camera footage from inside the home of Tim Lambesis and Danny Ciara anonymously surfaced online near the end of 2024. And what can be seen in these clips is pretty disturbing.

24:47 In one video, which appears to take place on an outdoor patio, Lambesis suddenly flips over the table that Danny is sitting at. And as she walks away, Lambesis follows, grabs her, turns her around to face him, trapping her in the corner of the patio. And this is the crazy part. This huge muscle-bound man starts to repeatedly punch himself in the head with both fists yelling, please love me, please love me over and over. In another video, The couple appears to be in their bedroom. There's no sound in this one, but a shirtless lambesis lunges at Danny, who is sitting up in bed, and he appears to violently pin her just outside the camera frame. And when he lets her go, he jumps up, his body vibrating,

25:32 yelling at her before sitting back down on the bed, grabbing her face with his hands, and then, yes, once again, pummeling himself in the head with his fists. As the metalcore community reacted online to what they were seeing, Tim Lambesis defended himself by releasing his own statement. In this missive, Lambesis claimed that he was the victim and that the leaked videos were attempts at retaliation over his initiating a divorce.

26:00 He further stated that a domestic violence investigation was being launched not against him, but against his wife, Dani, and that she had verbally and mentally abused him for years and that he even had video evidence of Dani assaulting him. Of course, none of this supposed evidence ever saw the light of day, because there was no evidence to the contrary.

26:24 But there was plenty more evidence to come in the case against Tim Lambesis. In early 2025, another clip of home security camera footage leaked, this time appearing to show Tim Lambesis abusing his wife's dog. As tens of thousands of signatures were being collected for an online petition to investigate Lambesis for animal abuse, his former bandmate Ken Soucy appeared on a podcast called Brutally Speaking to talk about another video. This particular video had been captured a while back on a security camera at Ken Soucy's house, but had been kept a secret until now. According to Soucy, this video is the reason why he and the rest of As I Lay Dying quit the band. Because, as Ken Soucy would allege, this video showed Tim Lambesis inside

27:14 Soucy's house abusing his wife, Danny Sierra, by cornering her and spitting in her face. Danny denied leaking any of the videos online. In fact, she asked whoever was doing so to stop. But she did use this opportunity to finally walk back the previous statement she'd made in which she had said, I want to make it unequivocally clear that these allegations are completely false. Now it was time for the truth. Once again, posting on Instagram, Dani alleged that she had been coerced by Tim Lambesis and his management into denying any allegations of abuse. The reason given was to protect his career and public image. She said she even had proof of this coercion. She also accused Lambesis of intimidation and bribery and said, incredibly, that he

28:05 wanted her to sign an NDA as part of their divorce so that she couldn't talk shit about him afterward. Which, clearly, she did not sign because, just like Ken Soucy, Danny Sierra was talking. And the world was now seeing Tim Lambesis for what he really was, which is to say, the thing he'd been all along. He could see it so clearly now. It was as though the heavens parted and the sun came shining through like rushing water overwhelms a break in the dam. Standing before him, a reflection of himself, looking back with empathy, looking at his double, looking at a man who had done a horrible thing.

28:47 This reflection had the same topography of muscles and the same jungle of tattoos, the same fire in his eyes. Except this version was something he was not. This reflection was one of a rehabilitated man, a man who'd made amends, found peace, and been redeemed. Unlike this reflection, redemption for him remained an oasis in the desert. So why was he being shown this vision? To mock him, or to give him strength to carry on? There were people who would never forgive him, and there was nothing he could do about that. But unless he wanted to lose everything, He knew he had to do something, no matter how drastic.

29:32 So he stole the reflection. He assumed its form and told everyone it was actually him. That this was a chance. man. That even though he no longer subscribed to their faith, they could have faith in him. But the ruse was weak, and the reflection was something that only he could see. No one could see his redemption or his rehabilitation. All anyone could see was what was beneath that false exterior.

29:59 The man he truly was. A charlatan.

30:05 When As I Lay Dying frontman Tim Lambesis confessed back in 2014 that he had lost his faith and simultaneously revealed that the Christian metal.

30:20 Scene was, so he said, made up of phony non-believers... It took a lot of fans by surprise. Perhaps it shouldn't have. After all, this is coming from a 30-something-year-old man who was confined to his parents' house with a GPS monitor stuck to his ankle, waiting to be sentenced for trying to hire who he thought was a hitman to murder his then-wife. Is it possible that Lambesis wanted to stir up some shit as he was being taken down and thus take everyone down with him? Misery-loving company, you know what I'm saying? Well, of course that's possible, but Listen, losing your faith, going through periods of great doubt, this is something that every believer goes through. Look up the story of Thomas the Apostle in the Bible. Even

31:14 priests lose their faith. Martin Scorsese has made an entire 50-plus year career out of this very subject. It's okay to doubt because doubting is natural even amongst the most faithful. It's okay for your faith to become unsteady. And if it's cool for a priest to lose his faith or confront the lack of faith, it's cool for an entire music community, a community like the Christian metal scene, to question their faith as well. But that doesn't necessarily make it phony or corrupt. What does make one phony or corrupt is to be a fraud, F for fake, someone who is willing to do anything in order to keep themselves in the spotlight. Someone who will lie and cheat and manipulate and distort the narrative so that it will

31:58 reflect favorably upon them. Which, as people such as Ken Soucy and Danny Ciara have alleged, is exactly what Tim Lambesis has done. And that's not even the craziest part of this story. It was December of 2025, and Tim Lambesis had managed to convince four new musicians to join As I Lay Dying and head out on tour in the new year Only this tour would take them to one of the few places left in the world map that would actually have them. Russia. And this is not to say that Russia was the only place that would book the infamous As I Lay Dying, but Russia is where Lambesis and his new crew had chosen to make their live debut two months earlier in October of 2025.

32:45 And after a few shows in Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands... Russia is where they plan to return for 10 dates in March of 2026. This was a highly unorthodox move, not to mention a highly frowned upon move, because ever since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a large majority of American and Western bands have deliberately avoided performing in that country altogether. It was around the exact same time that As I Lay Dying announced their return to Russia that in December 2025 that Lambesis' ex-wife, Dani Ciara, appeared as a guest on the Brutally Speaking podcast, the same show that Ken Susie had appeared on months earlier. And just like Ken Susie, Dani had a bombshell or two

33:33 to drop, which somehow turned out to be some of the most insane revelations in this entire saga. At first, she talks to host John Beatty about her whirlwind courtship with Lambesis, the bliss of those first dates, how he swept her off her feet, and how they married just weeks after meeting. But only six months into their marriage, as Danny tells it, Lambesis had been unfaithful. She describes the day she found out as the worst day of my life. And this led to arguments and violent outbursts from Lambesis, which Danny attributed to his regular steroid use.

34:08 Danny doesn't deny screaming at Lambesis during their arguments. This was a guy who had cheated on his new wife and she was pissed off about it and She had every right to be pissed off and every right to scream at him. But Danny alleges that Lambesis then took that security camera footage of their fights, manipulated it by removing the audio, and emailed the silent video clips to the rest of the band, thinking that he could spin the truth and convince everyone that she was verbally or emotionally abusing him. When in reality, she was just calling him out for being a shitty husband. Now, The weird thing is that, as Danny tells it, Lambesis sent this footage to the guys in As I Lay Dying using some dummy email address so that it looked like it

34:52 was coming from a third party. How was this supposed to help make Lambesis look innocent? I don't know. But all it did was raise more flags because there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the email came from Tim Lambesis. According to Danny, he later admitted to sending that email and said he's just trying to salvage his career.

35:13 But one of the most fucked up accusations that Dani makes during this nearly four-hour podcast interview about her ex-husband, Tim Lambesis, is something that she stumbled upon while trying to find more evidence of his cheating and lies. She tells the host that she discovered AI-generated porn on Lambesis' smartphone. Specifically, as she puts it, a pic of a kid like erect making out with an adult woman. She says finding this made her feel disgusting and gross, and when she confronted Lambesis about it, he denied it. Danny Sierra told the Brutally Speaking podcast that she has proof of the AI-generated pornography she found on Tim Lambesis' phone. I don't need to see that, because... Whatever with that. I've seen

36:05 the leaked camera footage online of Tim Lambesis losing his shit, violently flipping over furniture, grabbing his wife, beating his own head with his fists, and kicking a dog. I've read through the reports of his trial, which cover in great detail the lengths he went to have his first wife, the mother of his three children, murdered. I've listened to the testimonies of people who witnessed his toxic behavior. People like As I Lay Dying's Ken Soucy and Lambesis' third wife, Dani Ciara. And I've heard what this abusive, manipulative person has had to say about what he perceives to be the phony state of Christian metal. I guess what I'm saying is, I'm prepared to make a judgment about the man.

36:48 But I'm not prepared to judge the entire music scene. Because consider this. The biggest Christian metal story of this year, 2026, involves one of the bands that As I Lay Dying used to tour with on the Christian metal circuit, Demon Hunter. They made headlines when they sued Netflix for trademark infringement, among other things, over the streaming service's most watched film of all time, K-pop Demon Hunters. In the lawsuit, the band says that the title of the film has created substantial confusion in the marketplace. People are buying tickets to Demon Hunter shows, thinking they're going to see K-pop Demon Hunters, and vice versa. Now, Demon Hunter, the Christian metal band, doesn't want any confusion, substantial or otherwise, around who they are.

37:33 This is a band that proudly wears their Christianity on their sleeve. They're not ambiguous about their beliefs. They're not concerned, as Lambesis has stated in the past, that they will lose fans by aligning with their faith and aligning as standard bearers for the Christian metal scene. There's nothing phony about Demon Hunter. And I'm not sure we can ever say the same thing about Tim Lambesis and As I Lay Dying ever again. And that's not necessarily because of the music. or the music scene, it's because the man is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.

38:26 All right, guys, thanks for checking out this episode of Disgraceland on Tim Lambesis. And as I lay dying, what do you guys think? The question I'm trying to answer here is the Christian metal scene full of charlatans, a bunch of phonies. You heard where I came down on this, but I want to know what you think. I wonder if you have any experience in this scene, especially. That's what I'm most interested in. Have you gone to these shows?

38:46 Do you listen to these bands? Are you old school? Were you vibing on Striper back in the day? Are you an As I Lay Dying fan? What do you think of all this? Hit me up, 617-906-6638. Voicemail and text. You want to hear yourself on the next episode of the After Party, our bonus episodes. Hit me up. You can also email me, disgracelandpod at gmail.com. Hit me on the socials at disgracelandpod. Here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, The Exactly Right Network, and iHeart Podcast. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really

39:28 appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at disgracelandpod and on YouTube at youtube.com slash at disgracelandpod. Rock-a-rola.

39:51 He's a bad, bad man.