Pain Of Salvation vient d'annoncer ce lundi 1er Mai que Ragnar Zolberg quittait le groupe.
Voici un extrait du message publié par le combo suédois sur sa page Facebook:
"After a few years of working together with Ragnar, I feel that we have come to a point where it is necessary to part ways. It feels very sad, because we are losing a great vocalist and stage personality in Ragnar. It felt great writing the new album together with him, and I am very thankful for that time. We all are. But with time it has become clear that his true place is not in this band. Musically, it has worked very well, but there are so many other variables that need to click in order to make a band strong and stable."
de son côté, Ragnar officialise son départ entre autre de la sorte :
"As it turned out, everybody worked on the album as a team, but as soon as our album was finished last year, the band leader started acting in a very similar manner as what we have been seeing of the band Ghost recently. It was clear that this was not “our" album anymore, but his. I got payed a small amount of 1000 euros for my work for those 2 years, that did not even cover my travel expenses."
L'Islandais à la chevelure blonde et à la voix d'ange avait rejoint PoS en 2011 comme deuxième guitariste et chanteur suite au départ de Johan Hallgren, qui lui en a fait partie de 1998 à 2011.
Le même Johan Hallgren remplace Ragnar Zolberg au pied levé pour permettre au groupe de poursuivre sa tournée européenne actuelle dans les meilleurs conditions.
En attendant, il est certain que ce n'est que le début d'une polémique à la... Ghost !