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A former Christian music rocker is admitting to faking the faith after being sentenced to prison in a plot to murder his wife.

Tim Lambesis, 33, lead singer of the band As I Lay Dying, says he and the other members of the group had secretly become atheists but strung all their followers along to keep selling records.

Reports Christian Post:

In a wide-ranging interview with Alternative Press shortly before he was sentenced to six years in prison last month for attempting to hire a hitman to murder his estranged wife, Meggan Murphy Lambesis, the singer addressed a claim he made last year in a YouTube video about his spiritual allegiance after fans started saying he had become a Satanist.

“A month before your arrest, you posted a YouTube video addressing fans who felt your new side project, Pyrithion, was ‘satanic.’ I remember watching the video at the time and noticing you never gave the easy answer: ‘Of course not. I’m a Christian!’ You knew people thought of you as a Christian. Weren’t you lying by omission?” asked AP’s West Coast editor, Ryan J. Downey, of the singer in the interview.

Lambesis responded: “Yes. If you say, ‘This is what I believe, you can count on this. If you believe the same things, I’m on your team.’ A lot of Christian parents said, ‘Yes, you can buy this As I Lay Dying CD, because they’re a Christian band.’ They don’t even think to actually check the lyrics. So when you change your views, you kind of owe it to the fans to be honest.”

“Truthfully, I was an atheist. The ‘strategy’ I had at the time was cowardly. Two of the songs on that record were about coming to grips with the idea that life has no purpose, no meaning. These were negative themes I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to deal with in As I Lay Dying songs. I thought making As I Lay Dying darker would be bad for my career. That was my thinking,” he said.

Labesis also went out his way to dry snitch on other bands saying they too, felt like he and his band of Judas priests. No word at press time if former fans plan on a mass burning of his CDs.

The full video interview can be found here. Flip through the gallery below to see a few unsavory pics of Lambesis when he was still pretending to be Christian.

Photos: Facebook/Tim Lambesis

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