People Are Confusing ISIS the Band With ISIS the Terrorist Group
A former hardcore and sludge metal band that unfortunately shares a similar name with the Islamic militant group responsible for beheading a journalist from New Hampshire is receiving some unwarranted attention.
According to the band ISIS, which formed in Boston back in 1997, people posted pro-Islamic messages to the group’s Facebook page, confusing them with a terrorist organization wreaking havoc in Iraq.
“It certainly caught us off guard,” said Aaron Harris, the bands old drummer, in a statement sent to Boston.
The band shares a similar moniker with the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, a group of terrorists who have been flooding news headlines due to their association with the murder of James Foley, a reporter who once worked for Boston-based GlobalPost. Foley was captured in Syria in 2012, and was murdered on video earlier this week as a “warning” to President Barack Obama to stop dropping missiles on Iraq.
A representative for the band said the messages were not threats directed toward the members, but rather people mistakenly posting on the band’s Facebook page thinking that it was an account belonging to the terrorist organization.
ISIS the band officially broke up in 2010 in California. However, they still receive correspondence from people through social media, because they regularly post status updates to Facebook to keep fans afloat of what former group members are up to these days.
Band members aren’t the only ones that have been getting attention for the title of their group at the moment. Listeners who still actively support ISIS’s music have admitted to receiving some odd looks when out in public wearing clothing representing the metal group.
“Haha…I wear an ISIS-shirt today and the people looking at me in a strange way….and now I see you named ISIS the band,” one person wrote in early July, when the band clarified who they were on their Facebook fan page by adding “the band” to their name.
