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Vitriol Frontman Kyle Rasmussen Alleges Drugs and Police Played Role in Bandmates Abandoning Him on Tour - Ex-Guitarist Keith Merrow Responds

Vitriol vocalist/guitarist Kyle Rasmussen has released a video statement offering his perspective on a dramatic turn of events during the band’s ongoing North American tour. In a post shared to social media this morning, November 24th, it was revealed that guitarist Keith Merrow, bassist Brett Leier, and drummer Andy Vincenzetti all departed the band simultaneously—reportedly leaving Rasmussen stranded at a gas station in Vermont.

All three members had joined Vitriol over the course of 2025. The incident occurred in the midst of the band’s first-ever North American headlining tour, with Weeping serving as the opening act. Merrow addressed the situation on social media, stating:

“HE FUCKED AROUND AND FOUND OUT.

I’LL BE HOME FOR THANKSGIVING, BABY.

SORRY VITRIOL FANS. WE HAD TO ABANDON HIM AT A GAS STATION IN VERMONT.

MYSELF, ANDY, BRETT, AND MATT WILL NOT TAKE KYLE‘S COWARDLY AND WEAK OUTBURSTS OF MISPLACED ANGER.

WE GAVE EVERYTHING WE HAD, AND NOW HAVE NOW LEFT YOU WITH NOTHING. MASS EXODUS.

THIS WAS THE DARKEST DAY OF MY MUSIC CAREER TO DATE”

Rasmussen’s response came in the form of a livestreamed video lasting just over 40 minutes, which can be viewed below. Rasmussen detailed his perspective on the unfolding events.

Some key takeaways from his account include:

- He alleged that in an attempt to physically confront him, Merrow shoved aside Rasmussen’s girlfriend, who had been traveling with the band in the tour RV.

- Rasmussen claimed the departing members involved a state trooper to remove him, his girlfriend Maggie, and their dog Ghost from the RV.

- Contrary to the former members’ statements that this occurred in Vermont, Rasmussen said they were actually left at a closed ice cream store in New York.

- He acknowledged his own anger issues and stated that he regularly attends therapy to address them.

- Rasmussen accused Merrow of spreading falsehoods about him within the band’s inner circle and said he had attempted to resolve the conflict, but the other members rejected him and abandoned him without access to money. This financial issue, he said, stemmed from having previously put Merrow in charge of the band’s finances.

- He added that he, Maggie, and Ghost were left with a significant amount of the band’s musical equipment and merchandise, and plan to launch a GoFundMe to help return home to Oregon.

- Rasmussen concluded that Vitriol now faces an uncertain future, and he intends to take some time off to assess the situation.

As for what he said in the video, here is the complete transcription:

“Hello. Here I am. I’m going to do my best to get straight into the current events because I know that’s what anyone is wondering about. But I wanted to take this opportunity to make this video about more than that, and not just this current instance, but the circumstances, the foundational issues that keep leading to the volatility of this band. I’m going to do my best to take as much accountability as I can without robbing other people of their accountability. I’m also going to be… Pardon me.

This video is going to be very freeform, and obviously, this is a complicated time for me. This is not going to be the most fluid you’ve ever heard me speak, so bear with me. I’m also going to be as honest as I possibly can. I know that for me, that’s typically a red flag when someone says that, but I’m mentioning that because a big reason why I’ve never come out and said anything in the past about any of the other members, well, frankly, there’s a lot of reasons that I don’t think that’s a valuable use of my time. But there were people that were hurt in this situation that are not me, people that I care very much about.

I wanted to give some time before I made any statement. I was conflicted. I felt like I owed it to the fans to let them know as soon as possible that the tour was discontinuing. But it was important to me to see how Keith, Brett, and Andy decided to handle this in the following day. Unfortunately, they chose to double down, and they are sharing information with people I care about that simply is just not true.

Some of it’s an exaggeration, some of it’s outright fallacious. Anyway, so first piece of honesty. I’m a pretty shameful guy, so I have no issue telling you that I like to indulge in responsibility. About once or twice a tour, I can’t use the real word because it’ll probably get censored somehow, the flag. But I like to indulge in nosebeers. I am sure it doesn’t take much imagination to know what I’m talking about. So we play our show in New York, and I managed to get some nose beers, and we all indulged. After about a day, of course, if anyone has participated, they know it’s very easy to lose track of time. After enjoying it for a while, we realized we didn’t have a lot of time to rest before the show.

Basically, long story short, for about 30 hours, these men were heavily intoxicated. I was for a great deal of time. And then after our New York show, I was convinced that I needed to… enough was enough. I went to bed. They very lightly asked me to participate. I chose not to. I chose to sleep instead. I wake up to the sound of everyone in the RV ceaning and talking. If anyone has been in that environment, people who are on that chemical, you know how manic that could be.

I hear them in that almost paranoid state. We’re about to cross the Canadian border, and they are worried about, of course, what’s in the RV. We have had weed in the RV, and they’re like, Oh, my God, we’re going to have to throw this out. We’re going to have to throw that out. I was like, Guys, Can we just chill the fuck out? As a guy who’s been over the Canadian border 100 times, they’re not looking through the cabinets for a vape pen. I was just offering a Keith got a little defensive, asked me to not judge them. I said, I’m not judging you.

I’m just trying to offer my perspective to help you guys maybe feel a little less concerned. At that point, Keith came into the bedroom, the curtain of my little [space]… In the back of the RV, there’s a private bedroom where I was resting after that very long night. He comes in and he’s standing over me. I think what’s going on is he’s very intoxicated and he thought I was belittling him or trying to make him feel small or cowardly, which is not my intention. He comes in the room, he’s just in his big, tall way looking down at me.

I was like, ‘Bro, now is not the time, dude. Can we… This is crazy. We need to get some sleep. I’m not having this conversation right now.’ So he leaves, and he comes back again. I said, Keith, you really got to get out of my space. Now, let me give you a little backstory. Keith, this is a little first glimpse into my accountability. Shocker, the guy who dedicated his life to a band called Vitriol, has anger problems. That’s why I started the band, for some catharsis, to engage that part of myself and feel less alone and connecting that darkness with other people who are wrestling with it.

I’ve done everything I can to be as open and honest as I can in preparing people for these slip-ups. That doesn’t mean I’m not responsible for the consequences of those slip-ups. It’s still me. But it’s just the way growth works. Anyway, so he knows this about me, and it is my belief in this moment that he is trying to leverage that weakness of mine to endanger the morale or the health of the environment. That’s when I got very upset, and I screamed, and I said, ‘How dare you? How fucking dare you try to ruin this by goading me, by egging me on to do something that you’ve seen me do?’

It was heartbreaking. And part of me knew that it was the chemicals talking. Anyway, I called him a fuck. I said, ‘You fuck. How dare you get the fuck out of here.’ I didn’t threaten him physically. I didn’t touch him. He leaves. I try to go back to sleep. At this stage, I’m not thinking that the situation is that dire. Obviously, he got uncomfortable and stressful, and I blew a lid. I’m sorry. This actually deserves more It’s a back story, too.

That time that we were indulging, we were intoxicated, everyone was doing what they do on that and spilling their guts. We’re all talking about the stuff that’s hard to talk about, talking about our childhood, talking about our trauma. All that stuff was right here, super raw. My anger, unfortunately, really catalyzed something in what Keith had surfaced for himself in his past. I’m not saying that as a assumption. This is something he told me and told Maggie at the time.

Allegedly, they wanted to have a conversation. I was not aware of that. Nobody told me that they wanted me to leave the RV and have a conversation with them, albeit I don’t think that that would have been very productive. They weren’t being very reasonable. I think there’s evidence for that as the story continues. I wake up, and now Maggie is coming in the RV telling me that everyone is packing their things. I didn’t understand what was going on. I didn’t even understand what she really meant. I get up, I sit in the passenger seat, I light up a cigarette, and I see the guys walk over to the driver’s side.

They open the door and Brett just shouts, ‘You can’t talk to us like that.’ I said, ‘Talk to you guys like that?’ I yelled at Keith. I was like, ‘What about the physical invasion and not respecting me when I asked him to leave the space when he was being hostile?’ …Whatever. That’s when Keith, when I didn’t offer a apology, that’s when Keith went full… That’s when the situation went nuclear.

He started using some very colorful language, and he told me to get out of the fucking RV and that he was going to stab me in the fucking neck. When I didn’t get out of the RV, he pushed my girlfriend to the side, Maggie, who has come here, who has left her life to help support this band and them, who cooked for them, who woke them up, who never did anything but show them kindness, compassion and nurturing. He pushed her out of the way to grab me by the jacket and try to pull me out of the vehicle. I said no. He said, ‘I fucking paid for this RV’, which he didn’t. Management paid for the RV.

What he meant by that is Keith spent far too much money on toys because he thought he was going to come into this band and put in a bunch of money and we’d be big old rock stars and he could live his dream. That’s just not how the world works. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I haven’t been on YouTube. I’ve been in a van. I know how this works. What happened was when that didn’t work out and shit got scary financially, he had to blame that on something and it could not be himself.

For the record, there wasn’t a single time in Keith‘s participation in this band where I asked him to spend any money. He spent a fuckload of money, but that’s because he wanted to. I had three separate times I told him, ‘Bro, we got enough. This is the premium experience. We’re good.’ Then he would pick something up, tell me how cool it was and how it was going to pay for itself. He tells me that he paid for the fucking RV and that I took advantage of him. Keep in mind, the morale of the band was fully intact.

We’re talking about taking this all the way to the top, that we’re a family, that we’re blah, blah, blah, literally 24 hours before this happened. From the outside, if I saw this, I would have to assume that this was just a pressure cooker of animosity that exploded into this extreme, It was an extreme action. It was a drugged-out temper tantrum. That’s the truth. Was I the catalyst for it? Was my rage? Was the intensity of my rage the match? Of course. And that’s on me.

But I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve been belittled on tour. I’ve been yelled at. I’ve had shit thrown at me. I’ve had people swing on me. I’ve had people name call me. I don’t even name call. I just am brutal with what I think is the truth. It’s not always… It’s rarely the right thing to do. But the behavior that followed freed me from any sense of loss. To get back to the story, once, I wasn’t pulled from the RV, and the door was closed, I sat there, heartbroken, because I saw in Keith‘s eyes a very wounded child. I don’t mean that in a belittling way.

We all have a wounded child in [us.] That was my wounded child talking when I came at him that hour. It broke me. I knew that he didn’t want to stab me in the neck. I knew he wanted to stab his past in the neck. In that moment, I was the face of the terror of his past. I think in that state, he saw that as an opportunity to take power from a life that always tried to take it from him. In that moment, I was a symbol of that.

As to how the other guys got so wrapped up in that when I didn’t treat any of them… Like, literally, Brett, two days before this happened, told me that he loves being in this band, that this is the best tour, that he’s ever done because it’s the first time he hasn’t felt anxious on tour. We did everything we could to roll out the red carpet. We paid for his work fee I said to get over here. We hooked him up with gear. Keith got him basses, and I didn’t even yell at him. It’s beyond me. Anyway, so I’m sitting there trying to find my way to the empathy to neutralize the situation.

I told Maggie, I’m going to take a chance. I’m going to go out there and I’m going to hug Keith and I’m going to tell him I love him. If he swings on me, he swings on me. I get out of the RV and I go to follow Keith. He is actively walking toward a state trooper high on cocaine, high on nose beers. I mean, first of all, If you need some context, outside of what he said, he said to determine who is more reasonable in the situation, these men decided to get the police involved in a personal, non-violent matter.

I mean, I guess it became potentially violent with Keith‘s threat. But while they were high on it, damn it. While they were high on nose beers, right outside the Canadian border, are these men who are thinking straight? My sister asked me, she’s like, ‘Why did you let them leave you there? It’s your band. Why didn’t you just take the RV?’ Well, there’s two reasons. I didn’t have the keys, and I wasn’t about to try to take on Keith, Andy, and Brett to get the keys back. I mean, that just would have resulted in me getting the shit kicked out of me.

I would be fine getting the shit kicked out of me if it meant I got the keys in the end, but I have a feeling that would have been a lose-lose situation. The second reason is it got so crazy by that point. I was so at a loss with the scope of what was happening that I just decided that the best move was just to remove myself from the situation. I said, ‘Maggie‘, we got to get everything that we absolutely need to get by, and we just need to get out of here.’ She was terrified. What are we going to do? Where we’re going to go? We’re in the middle of nowhere.

Also, if you want more evidence of how intoxicated these men were, they told everyone that we were in Vermont. We were not in Vermont. We were in New York. I know because I’m here now. I’m getting a little… There’s a lot going on through my mind right now, of course. I’m worried about myself. I’m worried about my loved ones that are here with me. I’m worried about letting down the fans. Okay, so we pack up our stuff. I get out of the RV.

The state trooper standing there. ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ I said, ‘I’m getting out of here.’ He said, ‘Oh, so you’re willing to leave the RV?’ I said, ‘Absolutely. I was just packing up my stuff. I’m out of here.’ He turned to the guy and said, ‘It seems like they’re willing to leave.’ I was standing there and even though I knew the answer, I felt like I owed it to everything to ask. I said, ‘Are you I was 100% sure this is what you want to do?’

They said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Is there anything we can do? Can I rent a car and follow the RV? It’s not just us guys.’ This is more evidence that it’s very hard to get people who have not participated in this for a long time – the touring industry – to understand how many people are affected when a tour falls apart, especially in the middle of a tour. They wanted to take everything from me, and they took nothing from me and so much from everyone around me. I have my work, I have the two loves of my life here, and I have my integrity. I’m not pretending that I’m not devastated about not being able to get up on stage and play tonight.

“Doing this, it’s so much more than a band to me. It’s kind like a joke that it’s banned. The things that I talk about with this band, and the interactions I have with fans who feel what I say, and can see the life affirming beauty in what I say, that gives me everything. Now I can’t bring that to them anymore. I’ve lost That connection, that spiritual camaraderie that is everything to me that you guys give me.

That’s why I do this for 17 years, and I’m fucking broke. And that’s not to ask for pity. I’ve never talked about that. Most people think I’m loaded. I’m just irresponsible. Of course, I’m heartbroken about that. But you can’t lose something you never had. And this band, there’s no place for people who may measure the pros and cons of that situation and end up with the conclusion they ended up with. I pleaded with them, Can we please just do it for the people outside of this? Anyone who’s been doing this long enough knows that lots of people do that. To do the job, a lot of people, if they have a falling out, they’ll do what they need to do.

They won’t even talk for the whole fucking rest of the tour. But they owe stuff to people who are not them. There have been so many times on tour where I’ve.. my smaller self, my selfish self, just wanted to go home. Anyway, so you didn’t take anything from me, ultimately. But you did take things from our friends in Weeping. You did take things from every supporting regional band that was excited to open these shows.

You took things from the fans that were excited to see us. You took things from our wonderful PR person who spent her time and hard work to help us wrap together some late promotion for this tour. You took something from our management. You took something from our booking. You took something from every venue that was counting on us playing that night so they could run their business and make money. That’s what you took. In all of this chaos, Keith decided to further twist the knife by unloading all of my equipment in the middle of nowhere. This is the middle of nowhere. Almost no cell reception, no Uber, no Lyft, no food. We’ve made it by over the last 20 hours, by the sheer goodwill of other people.

Unfortunately, those who witnessed the event showed great compassion. The police officer that was present stayed for a long time to make sure that we had a way out. He took us to a hotel. The man that owns the closed ice cream shop that we were left in front of was kind enough to let us put all the merchandise and my guitars and Maggie‘s luggage in the closed ice cream shop. We had to call… Anyway, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to go… Let me just say, they didn’t just put me in the situation. They put a loving, caring woman who was looking for a new purpose and a new thing to thrive in.

You took her and you left her alone in the snow with no reason to believe that we’d be able to find our way out of that situation. You did that to a dog. A dog that you are now coming out and telling people that I don’t take care of, that I don’t take care of myself. My sister was so concerned. She called Keith, and he explained to her that I don’t take care of myself. I I don’t shower.

I don’t brush my teeth. I mean, I’m on tour. I haven’t showered. Not great. I’m not stoked about it. But if I didn’t take care of myself, would I have taken three showers when I got to the hotel yesterday? And Keith took one. He’s telling my sister that I don’t brush my teeth. If I don’t fuck with my teeth, why are you getting on me all the time about my floss pics sitting all over the fucking RV?

And not only did he make my girlfriend feel rejected and lost and scared, but now he’s trying to tell people that I don’t take care of my dog. I don’t take care of Ghost. I don’t feed him. I don’t give him water. Ghosty, come here, baby. Come here. Who are you, baby? Who is he? Does this look like a boy who’s not taken care of? Does this look like a baby boy who doesn’t eat? Does this look like a baby boy who doesn’t get his brekky or his din din? He eats at least twice a day, every day. We had wet, canned food and dry food in stock at all times. Last night, when we had to call a pizza place to get food delivered, we actually went out of our way to ask if we could pay them extra to stop by a grocery store and pick up canned dog food. Ghost could eat last night.

What a tremendous cruel irony that these people are trying to sell a story to bolster their credibility that I’m not taking care of myself or those around me. That is just such a tremendously petty and low thing to do. My only assumption why they’re taking it this far is because either subconsciously or consciously, they know that they left an innocent woman and a dog, and the guy who invited them on this adventure in the snow because I yelled at him and I reminded him of his past.

A non-violent threat. I was just too mean. I don’t know, man. You can choose. I’m not here to coerce anyone or tell them to… At the end of the day, this is he said, she said. But when I look at this stuff, it’s important to me in a situation to come to a conclusion, Usually when it matters people I don’t know or I’m not involved with, I don’t really give a shit. But what I do is I look at the event surrounding the story. And The event is they robbed everyone of that tour because I hurt their feelings.

They couldn’t even just quit when it was done. What does that mean for Vitriol? Well, needless to say, the anger stuff is a big problem. I never thought that this could have happened with this group of dudes, especially this quickly. Obviously, I think if there weren’t the chemical element, the sleep deprivation, the severe therapy session for men who do not believe in therapy…

If you want to talk about psychological well-being. I am very well-medicated, and I see my therapist every single week, even on tour. I’ll pull over at a gas station to speak with my therapist so I can keep myself in sight. These are men who have never spoken to anyone about their emotions in their entire life. They vomited up after being intoxicated because that’s what those things do. They were just too lost in their own relived trauma to see the situation with clarity. I imagine they’re coming down off of that chemical perspective and I imagine if they want to continue a career in this, there’s a little panic on their behalf. I feel like they must feel a responsibility to make their action sound as reasonable as possible by inflating the offenses of my actions.

But you’ll notice all the information they omitted. They didn’t mention that they left a foreign woman who’s not even a citizen of this country, alone in a place that she’s never been, that she doesn’t know how to navigate. That’s what you did. To spite a guy who hurt your feelings. You said it yourself, Keith. You said, ‘We gave him everything,’ which you didn’t. You didn’t give me shit. You gave yourself. You invested in yourself, in your own dream.

I made the sacrifices throughout my life. I didn’t play it safe. I wasn’t a fucking shill. And you’re going to try to tag a trailer, not literally, but figuratively, to my sacrifices, funnel a bunch of money in so you can ensure that you can play rockstar. And reality didn’t give Keith the validation he needed, so he had to punish someone. And he punished everyone except for me. I can’t feel lost regarding people, that character. I’ve never kicked someone out of this band. I have never left someone behind. I have never… I got into a physical fight a couple of years ago with a guy who was on tour with us. Not proud of it.

Like I said, my anger is a problem, but he used some very strong disrespectful language to me when I didn’t… Well, I wasn’t participating in that back and forth. I hate to be that guy, where I come from, thing. But if you say certain things, there is no discussion to be had, and at some point, it’s just hostility. My lifestyle has taught me a way to respond to hostility. It’s not always the best way.

Anyway, even that situation, I didn’t leave them. We finished the tour. It’s not impossible to let two things be true. You can hate me, but still feel like you owe things to other people. That’s what being an adult is. Anyway, so here I am in New York, trying to figure out a way home. Charity is never, ever something I like to solicit. This band has been in financial crisis since its inception. The only time I put it out was when our bus failed that time. But I am emboldened to solicit because it’s not just me out here. It’s the two loves in my life. It is so important to me that they feel safe and are safe. What I’m going to do since, again, what a tyrant, right?

I gave Keith all the control over the money. I know people will have preconceived notions coming into a band where there’s a guy in the band. I’ve always had this policy, this extension of trust to diffuse any potential paranoia, where I always have the most trusted person in the band that’s not me handle the money. I decided that was Keith. So needless to say, we have about almost a U-haul truck’s worth of shit that he could have just left in the RV and even dropped off, just left in the RV.

Take the RV back and just leave it in there. I’ll go to the RV place and pick it up myself. No, he couldn’t do that because he had to make it as hard as he possibly could. So we have a U-haul truck full of shit out here in the middle of nowhere in New York that’s hanging out of closed ice cream shop. We tried to rent a car today. We can’t rent a car because neither of us have credit card. We really don’t know what to do. We could take a train, but again, all my shit’s here, my guitar… my insane power board.

…Anyway, this is almost 40 fucking minutes. I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff I didn’t even cover. Even after all of this, I’m doing Keith a favor of not really, ultimately, out of respect for his family. I love his family. I’m not going to share information that I think could really tank his fucking career. I’ll leave it at that. Let me just, I’ll leave it at that. I’m going to take the high road here. That’s where we’re at, man. What does this mean for Vitriol?

The most important thing in my life is this message that I’m communicating with Vitriol, and I’m always going to find a way to do that. I’ve always been a fighter. I’ve always said, I’m just going to keep going until I find the right guys. At this point, I never I’ve never anticipated something that’s disastrous, this catastrophic, losing all three members at the same time is something that is very difficult to bounce back from. I don’t know for sure what’s happening, but I have to assume that Vitriol is going to take a nice break for the foreseeable future until I figure out what the next move is.

For a number of reasons, I think even if I find guys that are willing to try this, after 15 bodies, that seems pretty far-fetched. Even if I do cobble the guys together, is an industry really interested in Vitriol anymore at this point? I think it would take a while to earn the trust of the industry again. But I want you to know, you have my absolute word that I did everything I possibly could to salvage this tour for you guys. I just couldn’t.

You just can’t reason with the unreasonable. I’m going to set up a GoFundMe to try to help us get out of here. We don’t have any money. As I said, Keith had the money. He didn’t even toss us 50 bucks at the gas station. He wanted us to freeze and die out there. He also had the audacity. When Maggie was packing up her shit and crying, he looked at her and he said, ‘You’re a good girl, Maggie. Be careful’, as in with me. He wasn’t the guy who physically assaulted my girlfriend to get to me, to pull me out of the RV so he could, ‘stab me in the neck.’

All right, guys. I’m not asking for sympathy. If you want to be team Vitriol alum, fine. Kyle‘s a giant asshole. It’s not untrue. I am a giant asshole, but I’m not a giant asshole in the way that people assume. I don’t just belittle people for the sake of it. I just can be very explosive when I feel like someone is not being straightforward with me, that I feel like I’m being manipulated or misled. When that happens, we’re deeply disrespected.

Like when I ask someone who refers to me as a brother to give me some space because now is not the time, and that’s not respected, that’s when I turn into a giant asshole. So multiple things can be true at the same time. I can be a giant asshole, and they can be small. So save us from the actions of smallness or do not. That is okay. For now, once we find a way back, I’m going to enjoy a nice little family field trip, road trip, back home to Portland with my loved ones, with my dignity and my integrity intact, and my love for this game intact, knowing I did everything that I could to make this work.

I don’t need to defend how much this means to me and how much sacrifice I’ve made. It’s in the past. It’s in the receipts. It’s in every action, how I responded to every member leaving. Did I ever get on and talk shit about any of these guys? And I’m still not going to. And I could say things. Anyway, this is long enough. We’re going to keep planning. I’m very sorry, guys. I’m really, really sorry that this didn’t work out. Until next time.”

Rasmussen has launched a GoFundMe to help cover travel expenses and other necessities, with a goal of $9,000 USD. Alongside the campaign, he stated:

“My name is Kyle, and I’m reaching out for help after an unexpected and difficult turn of events. While on tour with a band, my girlfriend Maggie, our dog Ghost, and I were left stranded at a remote gas station in upstate New York. After a disagreement with a band member, we suddenly found ourselves as far from home as we could possibly be, with very little money and no way to feed ourselves or secure transportation to get back to Portland, Oregon.

Since being left behind, we’ve relied on the kindness of strangers just to get by. The last 24 hours have been a struggle, trying to keep Maggie and Ghost safe and healthy while figuring out how to make it home. The uncertainty and stress have been overwhelming, but I’m determined to do whatever it takes to get us back to safety.

The funds raised will go directly toward securing a vehicle—either a rental or an affordable used car—along with gas, food, and lodging for the long journey home. I wouldn’t ask for myself, but I need to keep Maggie and Ghost safe. Any support, no matter how small, would mean the world to us right now. Thank you for reading our story and for considering helping us get home.”

Merrow, for his part, has issued a brief and dismissive response to Rasmussen’s video and account of the events. In it, he confirmed that he, Leier, and Vincenzetti have all left Vitriol, and added that the three plan to continue making music together in a new band. Speaking on social media tonight, Merrow stated:

“Everyone who’s reading this-

Me, Brett and Andy left Vitriol because Kyle sucks.

That’s it.

It doesn’t require an absolute psychotic 2 part video series to explain.

He irrationally screamed at the whole crew at the top of his lungs on multiple occasions
We simply won’t tolerate it, just like all the other 19 people who left this failed band.

What more needs to be said? It’s the same shit as every other victim of abuse.”

The earlier two-part response references Rasmussen’s statement being split across two Instagram videos. In a separate post, Merrow added:

“I’ve received so many messages in the past 24 hours from you guys. We really appreciate your kind words.

The silver lining in this situation is that I met Brett and Andy. We’re continuing together as a band under a different name because we love each other.

The amazing bambino crew will be joining as sound engineers.”

Tensions on the road aren’t new for Vitriol. Back in September 2024, then-bassist/vocalist Adam Roethlisberger left the band mid-tour following previous flare-ups.