Chino Moreno and Shaun Lopez of ††† (Crosses) have opened up about the difficult decision to continue the project without onetime member Chuck Doom.
The trio formed Crosses in 2011 and released three EPs and a 2014 self-titled album. Then the group ostensibly went on hiatus until reemerging in 2020, sans Chuck Doom. As Moreno and Lopez explained in a new interview with Kerrang!, the hiatus was partially due to a crumbling professional relationship between the duo and Doom.
“[Chuck] was going this way, I was going that way, and Chino was caught in the middle,” Lopez revealed. “I think Chuck wanted to do his solo thing and involve Chino, which kind of meant he wanted to do Crosses without me. … It was a bummer because the whole reason this stopped for that many years is because of one person and that one person isn’t in Crosses now.”
Moreno adds that the decision to continue Crosses without Chuck wasn’t an easy one (Doom and Moreno have previously collaborated in Team Sleep and Doom’s Saudade project). But for Crosses to exist, a change had to be made — at the expense of Moreno and Doom’s friendship.
“It was a really tough thing,” Moreno said. “It wasn’t a decision we made, like, ‘We want to do this without Chuck.’ He just really wasn’t present, he had other projects he was taking more interest in. There were two options: either we don’t do it at all, or we try it with just us two. We chose the latter. Mine and Chuck’s friendship has suffered because of that, sadly, because I love that dude. I appreciate him as a musician, and as a friend. Hopefully, we work that out at some point.”
He continued: “Shaun and his relationship had been fractured for quite some time before all this. My job wasn’t just to be creative anymore. For lack of a better word, I was ‘refereeing’ the writing project. That wasn’t fun at all. I could have fun making music with Chuck, I could have fun making music with Shaun, but making music together became like pulling teeth. That’s not the reason we started doing this. That’s probably as deep as I’ll go into that. It’s pretty self-explanatory.”
Moreno and Lopez have been productive since reviving Crosses, inking a deal with Warner Records and releasing a string of singles. A new EP, PERMANENT.RADIANT, will arrive on December 9th