Ken Susi Details the Breaking Point Behind As I Lay Dying’s 2024 Collapse

The second dramatic collapse of As I Lay Dying that unfolded last year was nothing short of unsettling. One by one, all members of the long-running metalcore outfit—except for vocalist Tim Lambesis—stepped away from the band, with many vaguely referencing that their personal beliefs or moral boundaries had been pushed too far. Soon after, allegations of infidelity and domestic abuse surfaced online, though Tim’s then-wife publicly denied the accusations of physical abuse.

In early November, Lambesis issued a public statement, attempting to explain the band’s breakup while revealing plans to rebuild the project once again. A few weeks later, leaked home security footage of Lambesis and his wife appeared online, showing them in heated arguments. In the videos, Tim is seen pacing, yelling, and repeatedly hitting himself in distress.

Lambesis followed up with a statement accusing his wife of verbal and physical abuse during their three-year relationship, claiming he had opened a domestic violence case against her and possessed multiple videos of her allegedly assaulting him.

He also stated that the leaked clips were retaliation for being served divorce papers just one day before the footage surfaced. In his words, the erratic behavior captured in the clips was described as “anxiety-filled reactions and defenses.”

By mid-January of this year, Tim appeared on a podcast to tell his side of the story regarding the band’s implosion and to discuss his ongoing mental health battles. However, just two days later, disturbing footage of Lambesis being physically aggressive toward his dog leaked online. Later that same day, his estranged wife Dany Lambesis publicly denied Tim’s claims and made her own set of allegations against him.

That troubling footage of the alleged animal abuse resurfaced in headlines this week as a petition demanding legal action amassed over 69,000 signatures. Amidst the growing outcry, one of Tim’s former bandmates from the most recent As I Lay Dying lineup has come forward, shedding new light on the incident that ultimately fractured the group in 2024.

Former guitarist Ken Susi discussed the matter during a new interview with the ‘BREWtally Speaking Podcast‘, where he spent nearly two hours—half of it focused on his time in As I Lay Dying. The full episode is available now.

Addressing why he’s chosen to speak up now, Susi shared (transcribed by theprp.com):

“… Tim being a litigious person, you know, and silencing everybody around the band in the particular situation that we’re all in, it’s obviously clear. The people that are close to him and who are not speaking, and I think the fans, it’s kind of weird why people are not talking, But in my opinion I think it’s unacceptable for Tim to go on podcasts with his friends and make false claims about how the band broke up.

I guess like, believe what you want, but my version of what happened totally doesn’t align with basically what he’s been out there saying and putting out statements about, right? So I really don’t personally want to get into a back and forth with Tim Lambesis, and I really don’t want to respond per se to what he said in the breakup and all that stuff, it’s just not what I’m here to do.

But I think the band just found ourselves in a position where we were essentially endorsing and promoting somebody with like a history… past accusations and he went to prison and all that stuff and he did what he did.

But like after his incarceration, it was almost like I did kind of see this coming. In my opinion, he formulated this like almost reality TV, you know, persona for his fanbase of like him portraying himself as his man of redemption or rehabilitation.

And it really gave those people that really do believe in that this like sense of, ‘I can get behind this guy and and do the thing that you know, that that he says that he is. And I can overcome my, the things that I’ve endured in my life,’ and like giving people hope. But to be totally honest with you, it’s as I said, it’s almost, like well-crafted and well thought out. You know, I really don’t believe in my opinion, I really don’t believe it’s a real thing in his world. But maybe he can speak to that.”

Susi continued:

“But, going back to the band, a lot of troubling issues kind of surfaced within the band in his personal life — well, surfaced in his personal life — but also with the band, leading the band into it. And we were just basically supporting somebody dealing with serious problems. And we were unaware of how serious those problems were at the time.

And when we figured, when the band actually, you know, it revealed himself and the band figured it out, that’s when, we really realized that… I believe, and we believe, that he, Tim, was, in need of professional help. And it was something that we were not able to provide or equipped to provide to him. ‘Cause we’re not like therapists and we’re not relationship experts. We’re, we’re none of that.

We’re just band dudes, like looking to play gigs and have a good time. And we were really kind of, a lot of us felt a lot regret when we figured out exactly what was going on, when the band evaporated. It was basically… what I’m trying to say is it had to stop.”

Reflecting on his prior connection with Lambesis from their time touring with Unearth, Susi said:

“I’ve done multiple tours with [As I Lay Dying, when Susi was in Unearth] and at those times, I always thought Tim was a good person. And there’s a lot of people that say that in that time.

And I was willing to stand behind somebody at that point because there’s layers of friendship and years of friendship and conversations that you have backstage and meeting families and doing things.

And, you know, the experiences you have with these people that are kind of like, ‘You know what? This guy messed up.’ And I’m here to say, yeah, those people that are saying that stuff online are 1000% right. But you just don’t know the full story.

And I’m saying that they’re technically right. I should have known better. But then again, I am the type of person, that I would rather give somebody a second chance. The second chance is the one, right?

And if you fail me from there, I would rather have given somebody a second chance than to not give them a chance at all, because that’s not how I’m made, you know? I would rather just kind of say I believe this person could be rehabilitated.

I liked this person before they were incarcerated. I have a lot of friends that went to jail and got out and are stellar people.

So if I miss an opportunity or, you know, or if I don’t support somebody in that time, then I’m a jerk.”

Susi also shared that he reached out to former As I Lay Dying guitarist Nick Hipa before officially stepping in to replace him. Hipa gave Susi a heads-up about the difficult environment he was entering. Reflecting on that warning, Susi admitted he “wasn’t dumb” to the issues simmering beneath the surface of the band.

When the host of the podcast noted that Lambesis may have inspired some fans through his redemption arc, Susi responded:

“In this particular use case scenario, in my opinion, the bad things outweigh the good things tremendously. And it is not something that I am going to endorse, support, condone. Like, I don’t want to be a part of anything that he has going on in the future. I don’t want to be friends with him.

He’s… there is no room for reconciliation between the two of us. I don’t respect what he’s done and I’ll never respect it. There’s very specific things that happened in my own home that I’m not happy with. There’s no amount of good that he can do moving forward to change my opinion. And that’s for me.

We can all sit here online and say, ‘Oh, I have a friend and he went to jail and he did well, and blah, blah. Well guess what? In this scenario, that’s not the case.”

He went on to say:

“There was so much bad footage that popped up online and I was, I think the whole band was like, ‘holy crap, this is what was going on.’ Like we had no idea, but we’re glad we walked away kind of kind of vibe.

It’s like for those people in the comment section being, ‘Oh, you know, this guy didn’t hit that dog too hard’ or, ‘This guy didn’t freak out that hard’ or ‘He barely touched her.’ And I’m kind of like, how much do you love this band?

Because the guys in the band don’t love it as much as you do at this point. You know what I’m saying? Like it’s time to stop. And the only way I would, me personally, Ken Susi, would ever support that particular project is if he wasn’t a part of it. Other than that, I’m done.”

Speaking about the camaraderie he shared with fellow bandmates Ryan Neff and former Unearth drummer Nick Pierce, Susi said:

“…We were ready. We were committed to this. We were definitely excited and committed. And that was all ruined. It was all fucking ruined for no fucking reason. Well, not, I’m not saying… no, there’s a reason. There’s no reason for the bad actions.

And then in the one, the famous thing that I say to everybody is all Tim really had to do is get out of jail and just scream to a fucking mic and be cool. And that was hard.”

Expressing frustration over Lambesis wasting multiple chances after previously serving prison time for a murder-for-hire plot involving his ex-wife, Susi said:

“This isn’t even his second chance. This is his 3rd, 4th, 5th… So these guys, you know, we deserved. We did all the right things. We were in the shit. We fucking played the shows. We we, we got the acceptance of the fanbase again.

The whole band just had a mass exodus and we, the second iteration of the band, recovered that, obviously with the team in place and it worked. People were liking us. People were giving us shows. They were asking us back on festivals. It wasn’t just Tim. and Phil [Sgrosso, ex-As I Lay Dying guitarist] said it, ‘step down, leave.’ Like please, do you know what the fans want?

And you know, if people are going to comment on this, do the fans want to see a band without him? I don’t know. But to be honest with you, I think it would be nice to, to see what that would be. But he’d never give it up over his dead body. He wouldn’t, he feels he’s done no wrong.

He can go get fucking YouTube guitar players and drummers and shit and and make them sign NDAs or do whatever the fuck he’s going to do. Have at it, dude. I just refuse to think anyone’s going to follow that after, the 4th 5th strike on you. They can’t love the band that much. There’s there’s a limit to these things.”

In closing, Susi touched on how Lambesis downplayed the departures of the other members, which included a situation involving a personal incident in Susi’s home that contributed to the final fallout:

“I’m not going to defame anybody, but I’m going to go out and say that Tim, personally with his statements after the band, have just depicted me and the other bandmates as unstable… It defamed my character. The guy wrote something along the lines of like ‘Phil quit, quit later, and the band took Phil‘s took side and others rushed to statements when when they were worried about rumors that were circulating.’

Like that was on November 4th, right. He wrote that on his on the personal As I Lay Dying page to a fan that was commenting about stuff. That was incredibly incorrect…”

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