Carnage announces return with emotional post about Avicii

Announcing his return after a short hiatus, American DJ and producer Carnage has issued an emotional statement, detailing the reasons for his need to leave the scene for a while. Sometimes the words are best coming from the horse’s mouth. So without further a do, below is the full statement from Carnage. He talks about his friendship with Avicii, and how Tim’s death almost one year ago was a key reason in hanging up the ‘Carnage’ alias for a while:

“It was Friday, April 20th, 2018…I was home in Vegas when my boy Panda woke me up and said we needed to rush to the airport or we would miss our flight to Miami. I scrambled to get ready, threw my stuff together, and hopped into an Uber. As we approached LAS my phone just started going crazy. 1 message. 20 messages. 100 messages. 300 messages. None of it was making sense to me…“Avicii is dead.” “OMG TIM.” “I’m sorry for your loss.” I could not comprehend what I was reading. First person I called was Martin (Garrix) because to both of us he was one of our idols. Me and Martin stared at each other silently in disbelief. I just spoke to Tim a few weeks before – he was one of my closest friends. We sort of came up together and went through a lot of similar experiences on the road.

I was running through the airport trying to catch my flight to play STORY Miami that night and trying to make sense of everything. I was in shock the entire plane ride sitting their motionless for hours…. And not even 12 hours after Tim’s death there I was playing STORY – drinking, partying again until 4am. Not because I wanted to but because it was my job. Like there I was performing in front of a huge crowd surrounded by all my Miami friends what was I supposed to do? One of my closest friends just died that day and my job was to go to the club and turn up with my fans? Like what??

It was then that I knew something had to change…I called my agent & manager…I said I had to slow it down. They told me I had to honour all my upcoming commitments or that it would put my business and everything I worked so hard for in a bad spot. My album just came out a week before I had a ton of upcoming shows and press planned to promote it. My tour schedule was booked out for the next 6 months. I almost had no choice but to keep going the way I was or essentially quitting my job.”