Hawthorne Heights takes record company to court

Hawthorne Heights has sued its former label, Chicago-based Victory Records. The quintet filed the suit this week in Federal District Court in Chicago, charging that the company and its chief, Tony Brummel, has "severely damaged" its reputation through "overly-aggressive, unethical and illegal schemes and tactics." The band is also accusing the label of fraudulent accounting, claiming it's been severely underpaid for the revenue -- $10 million, it claims -- it has brought to Victory via sales of nearly 1.5 million CDs and DVDs.

Victory has chosen not to comment on the suit, but a label lawyer told Rolling Stone that the company intends to hold Hawthorne Heights to the two albums it still owes under its contract.

Hawthorne Heights was particularly peeved at Brummel over an e-mail he sent to Victory street team members suggesting that they go to stores and tamper with copies of rapper Ne-Yo's In My Own Words -- the chief competition for Hawthorne Heights' latest album If Only You Were Lonely in February -- to help the band achieve the Number One debut that week. If Only You Were Lonely debuted at Number Three with first-week sales of 114,000 copies, but in a "manifesto" published at the official website hawthorneheights.com, the band laments that the accomplishment "now is tainted much like Barry Bonds' statistics."

In the online manifesto, the group also writes, "Like being in an abusive relationship, we let certain things slide as we were afraid, as many of the bands on Victory are, to stick our neck out for fear of being 'beaten.' We're done being abused."

Hawthorne Heights is still planning to headline this year's Nintendo Fusion Tour, which kicks off September 27th in Columbus, Ohio.
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