Mac Saturn says it removed ex-keyboardist’s parts from debut album following child sexual abuse scandal
In its first interview since Evan Mercer was sentenced to federal prison, the Michigan rock band says it’s ready to move on

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Detroit rock band Mac Saturn has broken its silence after the 2024 arrest of former keyboard player Evan Mercer on child sexual abuse charges, saying it re-released its debut album with its ex-bandmate completely removed from the project.
In a new interview with the Detroit Free Press, the band’s first since the charges were announced, the remaining five members say they have worked on new music as Mac Saturn and are trying to put the scandal behind them. The band also said it even took the extraordinary steps of removing Mercer’s keyboard parts and recording credits from its debut album Hard to Sell, replacing it on streaming platforms with the new version.
Its website macsaturn.com now touts a “remaster” version of the album. Mercer was also Photoshopped off of the album’s cover art.
The bombshell allegations against Mercer came mere hours before Mac Saturn’s record release show at the Fillmore, resulting in a canceled tour and seemingly derailing a promising musical career. Aside from a small number of scattered performances since, the rest of the band has kept a low profile throughout the court proceedings of Mercer, 31, who was sentenced in May to 15 years in federal prison for using the internet to solicit sexual images from children.
In the interview with Free Press music reporter Brian McCollum, the band said it regretted how it handled the situation, including the statement it issued in response to the news of Mercer’s arrest as well as its decision to carry on with the Fillmore show.
The band agreed it was rightly “torn to pieces” by critics for the statement issued to social media prior to showtime that appeared to some to be dismissive of Mercer’s victims, which read, in part, “Our focus continues to be on our new record, the current tour, and our amazing fans.”
The band also acknowledged to the Free Press that it had received a tip that Mercer was a pedophile prior to his arrest, and revealed it confronted him about it in 2023 — weeks after Mercer was initially questioned by law enforcement as part of its investigation.
According to an audio recording the band secretly made and shared with the Free Press, Mercer vaguely downplayed his legal issues as having to do with a domestic dispute with an ex-girlfriend. In reality, it was his ex who notified police after she discovered evidence of Mercer’s sexual abuse on her computer.
Singer Carson Macc, who was also accused by young fans of “predatory” behavior, admitted to the Free Press that he publicly lied about his age by saying he was 24 when he was really closer to 30. According to the paper, Macc claimed he did so because the band was courting interest from record labels at the time and didn’t want to be seen as “too old,” and denied the other allegations.
After the scrapped tour last year, the band performed in September for a previously booked appearance at the Bourbon & Beyond Festival in Louisville, Kentucky, adding a couple more gigs to test the waters.
The band says it spent the downtime working on new music. “We all just said to each other, in agreement, let’s take this time to work on ourselves, to process this, and to continue to write and record — to do what we do, in this time where we’re not able to do anything publicly,” Macc told the paper.
The Free Press reports that the band considered continuing under a different name before deciding to try to reclaim Mac Saturn from the scandal.
“We built that name. We built this project before [Mercer]. And we don’t want to let him take that away from us,” drummer Angelo Coppola told the paper. “We don’t want to let his actions derail the entire thing that we built.”
The week of his sentencing, Mercer also distanced himself from the group.
“This had absolutely nothing to do with them, and they knew nothing about it,” he said in a statement read by his mother in court. “It’s so unfair that my actions would impact their career.”
“To our fans, to whoever supports us still, and to the people that he hurt, we are sorry that we brought him in front of people. We will regret that for the rest of our days,” guitarist Nick Barone said. “We would never [knowingly] platform somebody like that. Black and white, clear as day, absolutely not. It goes against everything we have ever said, done or stood for, period.”
According to the Free Press, “Mac Saturn is ready for its public reemergence, excited to offer new music to the world,” though it has not yet announced a new record or any tour dates.