Former Teenagers Drummer Destroys Hotel Room with Fire Extinguisher

Victor Watel aka Aztek/Tribal-Club producer Panteros666, former Teenagers drummer and member of Parisian based forward-thinking dance collective Club Cheval (comprising of himself, Canblaster, Sam Tiba and Myd) has caused quite a stir over the weekend at Belgium’s ‘I Love Techno’ Festival.

He allegedly broke into fellow Irish act Psycatron’s accommodation with a fire extinguisher; ‘destroying’ the room and coating thousands of pounds worth of musical equipment including drum machines, laptop computers, sound-cards and live instruments in a thick sodium bicarbonate foam. The chemical is very corrosive and causes extensive damage to any electronic gear it comes into contact with. Other acts at the festival included Totally Enourmous Extinct Dinosaurs, Boys Noize, 17-year-old internet star Madeon and Canblaster.

This rather cruel prank is a reported response to Watel being told by the band to ‘go away’ after waking them at 6.30am asking for drugs following a big night at the festival. He left briefly before returning with the fire extinguisher. The act awoke unable to breath - ‘almost vomiting’ they chased and confronted Watel in his hotel room where he made no explanation for his bizarre behaviour. It is here where Psycatron say that Watel cowered behind his entourage, one of whom is accused of kicking band member Paul Bergenhenegouwen in the knee leaving it dislocated and rendering him wheelchair bound for the rest of their trip. The local authorities were then called.

Panteros666 made 2 mentions of the event addressed to @psychatron from his Twitter account - he apologized for his actions but maintained that he was under the influence of alcohol and does not do drugs. He also accused Psycatron of being physically violent towards his group and breaking his manager’s laptop.

@panteros666 ”@psycatron all my apologies 4 this terrible joke, we don’t do drugs, why do you focus on solely me, as i was not the one who sprayed ??”

@panteros666 ”@psycatron alcohol yes…not drugs. All my apologies again. I Understand ur violence was legitimate but my manager’s laptop is broken.”

Psycatron quickly hit back with a series of tweets dismissing his acknowledgment of guilt and revealing that there is video of the incident which will be released online very soon. Read them here.

It is clear however that despite his apology, Victor Watel’s image has been badly damaged; his facebook and twitter pages flooded with overwhelmingly hateful posts in the hours following Psycatron going public with the information. It’s worth noting that Watel doesn’t seem to have intended to cause damage to the band’s gear - it looks as though this is a harmless prank gone horribly wrong. The days of big acts trashing each other’s hotel rooms appear to be over and the cliche has well and truly fallen out of favour with music fans - one user describing Watel as an ‘…asshole and a coward’. Some went further, a twitter follower asked ‘What have u done to your career? If u even have one. Criminal damage and ABH? I hope u have the #BallsToCompensate’. There were plenty of others which were hundreds of times more menacing - we’ll keep it PG for you.

(pictured left) Panteros666 (right) Sam Tiba

I suppose the question to ask yourself in all of this is: do Watel’s actions, although reckless, necessitate such hateful, abusive, and as we observed, very scary online comments (including several death threats)? Especially since a public apology had already been made prior to the majority of these posts? Has the power of social networking allowed for musicians to completely ruin their careers with one stupid mistake? Should Psycatron have acted a tad more professionally and kept this to themselves - dealing with it personally rather than creating an online circus? Most importantly, is every artist at risk of this happening to them?

Psycatron’s response to this is concrete, asserting on their twitter ”For anyone who thinks this should have been dealt with privately ask yourself what you would do if you came home facing a repair bill of thousands and your friend and colleague in a wheelchair.” They say they “…thought long and hard about whether to make this public and it was the right decision.” The band engaged in Twitter bickering with critical followers long into the Australian night without response from @Panteros666 or any of the Club Cheval gang.

Heres the original statement from Psycatron’s Facebook Fan page:

“So after an amazing time at yesterday’s I Love Techno Festival. I went back to  hotel room with Dave and Paul Bergenhenegouwen at 630am. I went to sleep  straightaway exhausted after such a long night. While i was sleeping there was a knock on the door and  Paul answered it to find who we now know is @panteros666 standing in the hallway asking for drugs. There was nothing to suggest he would find any drugs in our room, but maybe we were;t the only door he knocked? He was told to go away and the door was closed on him. Up to this point, we had never met, we did not know him, his music or anything about him. He was a complete stranger to us. Five minutes later he returned with a knock on the door and then walked into our room and discharged a fire extinguisher, completely destroying the room and covering everything in the room (all our live equipment-laptops, controllers etc) with a thick coat of powder. I woke up in a cloud of smoke, choking and nearly vomiting. Dave and our Paul chased @panteros666 down the hallway to his hotel room. When we went to his hotel room he refused to come out and face the consequences for his actions. He preferred instead to stand behind three of his female acquaintances like a coward. He offered no explanation or apology for his actions. There were a lot of angry exchanges in the hotel room, and i stressed repeatedly that we did not want any violence or any fighting, but he had to leave the hotel room and face the consequences of his actions. We called the police at this point. At some point one of this cowards friends kicked Dave on the leg and dislocated his knee. The upshot of it all is we have been left with potentially thousands of pounds worth of damage to our equipment, we missed our connecting flight in London because we had to request a wheelchair for Dave at Heathrow and it took so long to arrive. We ended up going to hospital in London and instead of having a nice day at home with my family i end up getting home at 10pm. We had never met or even seen @panteros666 until he arrived at our door at 630am this morning so have no idea why he targeted us with such a random, stupid, attack. For everyone else who stayed at the Holiday Inn Expo last night, this guy is the reason you were awoken this morning by fire alarms going off repeatedly. The fumes from the extinguisher in our room were activating the alarms. The fire extinguisher that was discharged was the Dry Chemical type, which is made up of sodium bicarbonate, a salt based substance. When this substance penetrates any electrical equipment it will over time erode the internal circuitry and cause major damage. We had Macbook Pros, Roland 909 drum machine and our full kit list in the room which is all potentially damaged. Because i slept through the initial discharge i only woke up when i found myself unable to breath and choking in my bed because of inhaling so much sodium bicarbonate in such a confined space.

So to anyone even considering booking this Panteros666 for their event, you might wish to think again or face having him knock on your hotel room door at 6am trying to feed whatever drug habit he may have. The Belgian Police, I Love Techno promoters & staff and the Holiday Inn staff were most professional in dealing with this unfortunate incident and we thank them for their assistance, but it sadly put a huge dampener on an amazing night of music where we witnessed amazing sets from Carl Craig, Laurent Garnier, Agoria, Sebastien San and Tone and also got the opportunity perform at one of the world’s best electronic festivals.”

Outlandish behaviour aside, im still a fan of his music - check out Melbourne duo Naysayer & Gilsun’s awesome video mix of the Panteros666’s track ‘Horreo’  ft. all the members of Club Cheval. Triple J’s Mix-Up Show w/Nina Las Vegas also featured a mix from Panteros 666 on November 5th - stream it for free on their Website.

Here’s the official clip to the bouncy dark ‘Javelin’, title track to the new Panteros666 EP out now through Forma.T Records.