Asking Alexandria’s Cameron Liddell (left) and Ben Bruce Since bursting onto the metal scene almost a decade ago with a style that pulled from sources as varied as...
Asking Alexandria’s Cameron Liddell (left) and Ben Bruce
Since bursting onto the metal scene almost a decade ago with a style that pulled from sources as varied as ferocious modern metal-core, synthy electronic music and cocksure Eighties glam, Asking Alexandria have established themselves as one of the wildest and most unique heavy bands going.
But after three successful albums, including 2013’s From Death to Destiny, which reached Number Five on the Billboard 200, the British five-piece fractured when singer Danny Worsnop, who for many fans served as the focal point of the band, split under acrimonious circumstances. In the aftermath, Worsnop pursued a more traditional hard rock sound with his other project, We Are Harlot, while Asking Alexandria recruited a new singer, Denis Stoff, and released a fourth album, The Black.
Looking back now, guitarist Cameron Liddell acknowledges it was a trying period for the band. “It was a dark time for a year, a year and a half,” he says. “But with Danny, we had reached a point where we weren’t brothers like we used to be. It didn’t feel like that close connection anymore. And then you add in alcohol and drug problems… So we separated for a little while, and ultimately he left the band.”
But as the saying goes, time heals all wounds. “Sometime last year, Danny and I were both in L.A., and we met up one night and hung out,” Asking Alexandria founder and co-guitarist Ben Bruce says. “We ended up watching American Satan together, which is a movie I just starred in. And we were just chilling and he was like, ‘Man, I miss this…’ And I just went, ‘Me, too, dude!’ And it kind of just started there. I went back to Arizona, where I live,