As if r/HauntedMound wasn’t already drowned out with a plethora of terminally-online curated conspiracy theories, the new ‘Wicker Men’ EP by HM members ‘Hackledown’ and ‘Buckshot’ has been so underwhelming to its fans that they are now forced to conspire what in the actual fuck is going on behind the scenes. To make things even more polarizing, their latest music video for the track ‘Dopesick’ has been criticized as lazily edited and uninteresting – to the point where the only positive comment I’ve seen about it is ‘they did a great job syncing the audio to the video’. So what’s the deal? It’s been two years since we’ve seen an official release from Buckshot (ignoring his appearances in features). From the slew of scarce leaks (such as songs like Winchester and Swing the Scythe), the return of Ghost Mountain and the scaled expansion of Haunted Mound with its new division ‘MoundRich’ – you’d expect the Haunted Mound label to be on a positive incline. However, so far this year, it seems that the only people receiving net-positive reception is the collective’s founding fathers – Sematary & Ghost Mountain.

It’s even more confusing when you add to the mix the fact that Hackle and Buckshot are going on an international tour for a 4 song EP they barely promoted, as well as their not-so-subtle association with Sematary detractors, such as professional opiate addicts Marlon Dubois and Juju.

Clearly, something is going on behind the scenes. Usually the fanbase is pretty oblivious and naive to Haunted Mound’s internal affairs, but thanks to a small clique of supposed whistleblowers, we’ve been able to somewhat piece together the puzzle that is the dysfunctional operation of Zane Steckler’s musical legacy. But how do we trust the validity of these people? Why are they exchanging private information in exchange for Reddit gold and internet points? Fuckin’ beats me, but these people have caused enough uproar over the years to the point that members from Haunted Mound have occasionally been obligated to make public statements. So regardless of the truth, the fans are vocal enough so that we’ll probably see Buckshot make another ‘ADDRESSING FUCKERY’ style Reddit post in the near future, assuming he even cares about his reputation within the HMLLCCU (Haunted Mound LLC Cinematic Universe™).

So what are the fans conspiring? According to r/HauntedMound and the unofficial Discord, fans believe we might be in a EA2 sort of situation. Hackle and Buckshot may be in a position where they are not motivated, but contractually obligated to release music. This could be a fair explanation as to why we got 4 very mediocre, poorly produced, lackluster songs as opposed to what we’ve heard from the leaks and teasers over the years. There could be strong tension between Sematary and the ‘Wickermen’ (Hackle and Buck), the same way we saw tension between him and previous members Turnabout and Gonerville. This actually makes a lot of sense because Turnabout and Gonerville’s departure was so sudden, most likely because they weren’t under a contract at this time.

Is it True Or Rubbish?! Comment below.

I mean I don’t know, I guess there’s a lot more to say and speculate about but I’d rather just wait for the drama to come out. It’s kind of guaranteed (at least in my mind) that we’ll see another ‘exposed’ incident where some retard starts leaking obscure Discord DMs between the members of Haunted Mound and everything will sort of paint itself clearer. The reality is; Haunted Mound is the brainchild of Sematary. He paved the way and he set the tone for his artists to follow. The issue is, his proteges aren’t even inherently artistic, they both started off making art that was 1:1 imitating their idol. They were fans. Can you really blame them when they’ve been manufactured and forced into a creative box since the beginning?