Iced Earth vocalist Stu Block and bassist Luke Appleton both quit the heavy metal group Monday nearly a month since their bandmate Jon Schaffer was arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Mr. Schaffer, 52, of Columbus, Indiana, currently faces six federal charges related to the rioting at the Capitol last month and has been in custody since his arrest roughly a week and a half later.
In statements posted on social media, Mr. Block and Mr. Appleton said they notified Mr. Schaffer, a guitarist who formed Iced Earth over 30 years earlier, they have resigned effective immediately.
Mr. Block, 43, a Canadian, said he decided to leave Iced Earth after a decade of singing for the group upon spending the last few weeks “processing the situation” and determining it was best.
“Time to move on, heal and prosper,” Mr. Block said in part of a statement the singer posted on Facebook.
Mr. Appleton, a British musician who joined the group in 2012, said that his decision to leave was based on “recent events [and] circumstances” and described the last month as a “difficult time.”
Iced Earth has released over a dozen albums since Mr. Schaffer formed the band in the late 1980s, and the group performed hundreds of concerts in the U.S. and elsewhere in the decades since.
The FBI has appropriately called Mr. Schaffer “a person of some celebrity in the heavy metal industry” and therefore relatively easy to identify in the aftermath of the rioting last month.
In a court filing, the FBI previously said “numerous” people identified Mr. Schaffer after federal investigators started circulating images of people wanted in connection with storming the Capitol.
The FBI alleges the images show Mr. Schaffer, sporting a white beard and wearing a tactical vest and “Oath Keepers Lifetime Member” baseball cap, among the mobs violently breaching the building.
Mr. Schaffer, the FBI alleges, was among rioters who discharged “bear spray” at U.S. Capitol Police Officers as part of their effort to get inside the Capitol. He faces counts of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; disrupting the orderly conduct of government business; knowingly engaging in an act of physical violence on restricted grounds; violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; engaging in physical violence in a Capitol building; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
Public court filings do not list a lawyer for Mr. Schaffer who could be reached for comment on the charges.
The U.S. Department of Justice has opened over 200 federal cases so far related to the events of Jan. 6. Several of the defendants are alleged to have links to the Oath Keepers, a militia group.
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