Morbid Blackstar speaks exclusively with The Ritual

Pablo Vegara was a relatively unknown name here in the UK before the Netflix documentary ‘Crime Scene: The vanishing at the Cecil Hotel’ in February this year, where Pablo Vegara aka Morbid Blackstar featured in the documentary as a metal musician who was falsely accused of the murder of Elisa Lam.

Nate from The Ritual here on TotalRock caught up with Morbid Blackstar to discuss the documentary, the cyberbullying that exists against people from the extreme music scene and also his latest artistic projects and campaign to stop cyberbullying.

Nate – You recently have been in the spotlight after featuring in a documentary titled “Crime Scene: The vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” on Netflix. In the documentary, it reveals that you were falsely accused by people of the murder of Elisa Lam, on the basis that you were into metal music and Satanism. Can you shed some light on these events which took place?

Morbid Blackstar – It all started when this Taiwanese News TV station came after me and accused me of the murder of Elisa Lam. That’s when my life changed forever.

There are many questions that are still unanswered – Who tip them? Why did they target me? And how did they even got the rights to use my stuff?

As a Shock Horror Artist, my intention has always been to cause a reaction on the spectator, via visual, audiovisual or sonic formulas. To me, the real film is meant to be dangerous and uncompromising – That’s true cinema. So when I shoot a film I always push the limit. When the Web Sleuths and Internet Trolls found my works via my Facebook and Youtube account, they got triggered by the dark and graphic themes. Then one person found a video of me while chilling in my hotel room at the Cecil Hotel, this video dated for February 13, 2012, so one year prior to the discovery of Elisa Lam’s body… This, naturally didn’t mean anything to these brilliant detectives, right? Then they found a few tracks of my band SLITWRIST that contained lyrics and visuals portraying the demise and death of a woman, the track China had in the lyrics the innuendo of a girl dying by drowning in the ocean. It didn’t took too long for them to connect those things to the crime scene of Elisa Lam. Then they found my vast catalogue of pictures that portrayed me with my Alter-Ego ‘Morbid’ in which the themes were very obscure and they decided that I had to be the Killer. The gossip grew so much that I even made it to the TV News in Taiwan, where they stole some of my works to create a nice little note that translated into ‘Suspected Killer of Elisa Lam’.

After that my entire world was turned upside down and a relentless internet witch hunt was made against my character, defamation, harassment, insults and death threats were my regular day to day frustrations, then, out of spite, they flagged my Youtube channel, where I had over 10 years worth of audiovisual works, from commercial work to films, music videos and my band’s Live shows, amongst many other personal things, overnight I lost it all. Then my Gmail account was closed down and my FB account suspended.

The dangers of the internet trolling are serious and very real. My case was, back then, perhaps the biggest case of Cyberbullying to the date… Perhaps it still is.

Let’s not forget I have never been a Satanist nor do I support this religious belief. My works are strictly into the pursuit of Darkness as in a Carl Jung ‘Shadow Self’ type of approach.

Nate – In the documentary, you describe the huge toll that these false accusations took on you personally. The false accusations of being a murderer were aimed at you just because of maybe the way you looked, the music you made and even the lyrics you wrote. What effect did this have on you as a person as well as your hunger to create music?

Morbid Blackstar – When this originally happened I just took it as I would usually do, ‘Great, some new people got shocked by my works.. GOOD’ but then as things escalated and the internet witch hunt began and then the flagging of my channels and the destruction of my business, I pretty much just stopped working on my art. Firstly, to try to find a way to survive this ordeal, and then, it was just pointless to even do anything after that, cuz everything I was doing was being turned against me and was just causing harm in my life. I lost interest in making music and the type of art I was doing at the time. To this day I am still trying to get back to where I left off.. But I’m back and I have recorded a new EP with SLITWRIST that is pretty incredible, it’ll be released very soon along with a cool music video we just shot.

Nate – Do you think that in general there is still a stereotype out there against people who listen to metal music?

Morbid Blackstar – U kidding me? I mean, look at what just happened to me! Lol

The world needs a serious check, I must say, and I am here now to bring this to light, because, yes, I am pissed off and yeah, I’ve got a lot to say about it!

Nate – You are now making a stand against web sleuths and people who cyberbully people online. Can you please tell me about the campaign that you are planning to undertake?

Morbid Blackstar – As of now I’m working with some well-known organizations and personalities but can’t reveal much information until everything is consolidated. If you check my official site www.morbidone.com in a couple of weeks we’ll have much more information about it. All I can say is that we are attacking this issue heads on and we are doing hard work to bring awareness on the subject matter and we expect some good results very soon.

Nate – What would you say to readers out there who might be experiencing the same kind of issues that you did, and how can they get help?

Morbid Blackstar – First of all. Block everyone that is causing you trouble, and report them. And if things are really bad, contact the local police, Cyberbullying is a crime and there can be legal consequences, criminal charges for harassment and civil lawsuits for defamation of character and other harms like slander, etc. Cyberbullying affect the victim’s mental wellbeing and it is only highlighted when it is too late and the innocent party takes their own life, all the while the guilty perpetrators negate any consequences. Look online for organizations that work to prevent bullying and cyberbullying.

https://www.stopbullying.gov/resources/get-help-now

Nate – Do you think that more needs to be done by social media companies in order to stop people from being trolled, doxed and bullied etc?

Morbid Blackstar – Absolutely, but as far as I’ve been informed organizations like Facebook, Instagram and such are already making implementations by adding codes to their algorithms to detect and stop bullying words and behaviour such as hate words to stop bullies in their way. Cyberbullying is a serious issue that’s been plaguing our cyber world for a long time and it seems it’s become somewhat of a big enough issue lately that people are starting to take action on it.

Nate – Now moving onto your creative side. You have made lots of music under a number of different names, as well as being successful in the movie-making business. Can you tell me about your creative side and has the events of the past, had a big influence on the music or movies that you now make?

Morbid Blackstar – One of the main reasons why I decided to transition into the film industry professionally was the cyberbullying incident of 2014; That and other personal and professional issues forced me to reflect on what I really wanted for my life and my career and helped me in my decision. So far I’ve won a few awards in the international film festival circuit with my film NECROMURDER: A Black Metal Story and I am working on a few projects for future feature films I’ll be involved in. I also have 3 full Feature Screenplays, a vampire story: The Darkest of Fears, a Thriller/Slasher film: Behind the Sun and a Sci-Fi/Thriller: Heart of Doom, while I am writing my fifth screenplay for a biopic of a Colombian criminal who set the world on chaos back in the early 80s.

Creative wise lately I can guarantee you that I’ve written some really dark brutal and ravaging guitar riffs and lyrics due to the entire incident with the web sleuths and the shit I had to go through in my life because of them. The internet is such a Dark Void, no one is safe from it… But it gives a lot of inspiration for some uber misanthropic Lyrics and it’s a great source for inspiration since there are so many dark secrets hiding in it that can only be accessed by asking the right questions… and accessing the right links.

Nate – It goes without saying that you are a huge fan of extreme metal music. When did you first start getting into metal music and what are some of your biggest influences in the art that you make?

Morbid Blackstar – I started playing the guitar when I was 16, all Rock and Grunge and as I became more technical and experienced I started playing brutal death metal, technical stuff like Cannibal Corpse, Vital Remains, Necrophagist, Death, Hate Eternal, Morbid Angel, etc.. then I started playing a lot of Black Metal too, so I kinda joined the best of both worlds under my band Dynasty of Darkness which it incorporates a bit of both worlds plus the heavy Orchestral element in it. The coolest thing about my band is that I got to work with some of the legends I held as idols, my drummer is Hellhammer (Mayhem, Arcturus, Dimmu Borgir) and we invited Attila Csihar as guest singer. All Orchestrations are made by Pzy Clone (The Kovenant) and the album was produced by Steve Tucker (Morbid Angel) so yeah, this one’s quite a brutal piece, I highly recommend it. You can hear it all on my page www.morbidone.com and buy it there as well.

Nate – What are the plans for the future? Can we expect any more music or movies from you?

Morbid Blackstar – There is so much stuff cooking and even secret stuff I cannot talk about that is truly amazing…

To cite the words of the great Mickey Knox… ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet!’

All I can say is, there’s definitely more music we are working on, with my new lineup for my second band SLITWRIST here in New York City. There’ll be an Online Live Show at some point in the next coming months, and I am working on the post-production of my film NECROMURDER which will have a release around Fall 2021, and working on the Pre-Production of my next film BEHIND THE SUN, which I want to start rolling cameras around Winter.

I’d love to invite everyone out there to join the mailing list on my site so I can let you know all the latest news soon…

Nate – If someone has never heard your music before, how would you describe it to them?

Morbid Blackstar – The other day someone called me a Death Rocker… and I really loved that! Having a few Death Metal and Black Metal albums under my belt, but now also working on some moodier and more melodic compositions, I think that title fits me real well!

You can hear all of Morbid’s music by joining his mailing list here.

Nate presents a weekly extreme show The Ritual every Saturday night – join him for a weekly dose of depravity at 9pm.