Darkest Hour Guitarist Nearly Arrested For Bathroom Emergency

Mike "Lonestar" Carrigan, the second guitarist of Washington D.C.-based melodic death metal band Darkest Hour, may never have relished the expression, "Who gives a flying crap?" But after an experience on a winding Belgium highway during the band's 'Thrash and Burn' European tour, he probably hopes he never hears the phrase again.

"Anyone who has been on a tour bus knows that you can't take a crap in the bus bathroom," guitarist Mike Schleibaum explains to Noisecreep. "If you're somewhere you can't stop and you really have to go, you poop in a plastic bag."

The day that could have ended Carrigan's unsullied police record, the band's bus was in the middle of nowhere and the guitarist had just answered nature's call as required. Problem was, his bag of waste was stinking up the bus and there wasn't a proper garbage can for miles. His bandmates demanded he throw the offending package out the window, and after weighing the ethical considerations, he complied.

"A second later, two cops on motorcycles come screaming by," says Schleibaum, grinning widely. "If it had been a second later, he would have knocked that first cop off the bike with the bag of s---, dude!"

Even though Carrigan's droppings missed the officer, the cops turned on their lights and pulled the bus over. One of the policemen demanded to know who had thrown an object out the window, and when Carrigan sheepishly fessed up, they took him off the bus and made him retrieve the baggie, not realizing it was filled with human feces.

"When the cop found out what it was, he really became adamantly upset with Lonestar," Schleibaum says. "Because he realized that if it had hit him, he would have gotten knocked off his bike by a bag of s---!"

In the end, Carrigan was fined 50 euros and the band had to drive with the bag of poo in the bus until they found a town in which they could properly dispose of it. "I'm just glad the bag missed the policemen," Schleibaum says. "Otherwise Lonestar might still be in a Belgian prison somewhere."