Christian metalcore outfit Haste the Day recently bounced guitarist Jason Barnes after he came to believe that there” was no God and certainly no Jesus”:

This is going to come as a shock to many of you. After much prayer and thought given to the matter, we asked Jason Barnes to step down from his involvement with Haste the Day. For a while Jason has been searching and searching for real meaning in his existence. After several months of reading literature and talking with friends, Jason had determined that he felt there was no God and certainly no Jesus. We as a band do not have problem with those that do not believe in Jesus, nor do we cast judgement on those that do not believe in Jesus. We just want to love on people like Jesus would and hopefully share a little bit about what he’s done and doing in our lives.

We would call ourselves a Christian band and for that reason, we felt we couldn’t have someone in the band who didn’t agree with the band’s foundational drive. Jason’s new found disbelief in what the rest of us have committed our lives to began to cause disunity within the band and as a result, we prayed and talked about it and felt like God was saying it wasn’t time for Haste the Day to come to an end. Thusly, We asked Jason to leave.

We love Jason and it pains us all to not be on the road with one of our closest friends. It has also been a miserable experience for Jason to not be a part of something that he has been a part of for so long. We are all working on mending the tear in our relationship with Jason and are hoping to be able to continue to call him friend. We will not be replacing Jason with a new guitar player. Our friend, Dave Krysl, will be our full time touring guitar player. The four of us (Stephen, Devin, Brennan, Michael) all wrote our new album which will be called “Dreamer.”
We appreciate all the thoughts and prayers you can send toward us and Jason. Thanks for listening and as always, we will see you on the road!

It is with deep sorrow that I must announce that I have been informed by two very reliable sources that Casey from Hawthorne Heights passed away last night. At this moment there are no official announcements and no other information available - we will keep you updated.
-Absolutepunk.net

No one’s quite sure if Hawthorne Heights guitarist Casey is dead or not. According to their myspace comments, they’ve canceled their next few shows. So who knows, maybe some emo kid achually followed through with a self-mutilating threat.

If you don’t know about Mississippi John Hurt you totally should….. Delta Blues Legend!

—-from wikipedia——

“Mississippi” John Smith Hurt (March 8, 1892 [1], Teoc, Carroll County, Mississippi - November 2, 1966, Grenada, Mississippi) was an influential blues singer and guitarist.

Mississippi John Hurt (left) Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, he learned to play guitar at age 9. He spent much of his youth playing old time music for friends and dances, earning a living as a farm hand into the 1920s. In 1923 he often partnered with the fiddle player Willie Narmour (Carroll County Blues) as a substitute for his regular partner Shell Smith. When Narmour got a chance to record for OKeh Records in reward for winning first place in a 1928 fiddle contest, Narmour recommended John Hurt to OKeh Records producer Tommy Rockwell. After auditioning “Monday Morning Blues” at his home, he took part in two recording sessions, in Memphis and New York City (See Discography below). The “Mississippi” tag was added by OKeh as a sales gimmick. After the commercial failure of the resulting disc and OKeh records going out of business during the depression, Hurt returned to Avalon and obscurity working as a sharecropper and playing local parties and dances.
In 1963, however, a folk musicologist named Tom Hoskins, inspired by the recordings, was able to locate [2] John Hurt near Avalon, Mississippi. In fact, in an early recording, Hurt sang of “Avalon, my home”. With his guitar playing skills still intact, Hoskins encouraged Hurt to move to Washington, DC and begin performing on a wider stage. Whereas his first releases had coincided with the Great Depression, his new career could hardly have been better timed. A stellar performance at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival saw his star rise amongst the new “folk revival” audience, and before his death in 1966 he played extensively in colleges, concert halls, coffee houses and even the Johnny Carson Tonight Show, as well as recording three further albums for Vanguard Records. John Hurt’s influence spans several music genres including blues, country, bluegrass, folk and contemporary rock and roll. A soft-spoken man, his nature was reflected in the work, which remained a mellow mix of country, blues and old time music to the end.