“I was getting to the end. I was like, dude, honestly, if this doesn’t work out, I’m going to do something else”: Will Ramos was ready to quit music before joining Lorna Shore

Will Ramos onstage with Lorna Shore in 2025

(Image credit: Iwi Onodera/Redferns)

Lorna Shore singer Will Ramos was on the cusp of giving up music before he joined the band.

Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, Ramos, who spent years hopping between underground heavy metal bands before joining Lorna Shore in 2020, says that he would have got a “real job” had things with his current outfit not worked out.

“I had been in the music world for a little bit at this point, and for me I was getting to the end,” Ramos reveals to us. “I was like, dude, honestly, if this doesn’t work out, I’m going to do something else. I didn’t have full confidence [in myself]: I wanted to do something like this, but I just didn’t think I had it in me.”

When asked why he felt that way, the singer continues: “I was just tired from doing a bunch of music stuff over the years. Around this time, I was like, ‘I need to start thinking about real jobs.’ It was fun when I was young, but unfortunately for many people in the music world, that’s just what it ends up becoming: it’s fun when you’re young, but then you get older and you have to start doing real stuff.”

Ramos replaced former Lorna Shore frontman CJ McCreery, who was dismissed in late 2019. His firing was announced after his ex-girlfriend accused him of abusive behaviour, but guitarist Adam De Micco says that the singer was let go before the allegation was made. In early 2020, more women accused McCreery of abuse; he denied any wrongdoing in a statement that June.

De Micco tells us: “We were already having [McCreery] leave the lineup anyway. He didn’t really want to go on tour. He didn’t really want to go do a lot of things. He was looking to quit. I didn’t hear about any of that stuff until after he was already kicked out of the band.”

Lorna Shore approached Ramos to join after they found a vocal cover the singer had uploaded to YouTube several years prior. His first song with the band, 2021’s To The Hellfire, became their breakthrough single, going viral on TikTok and racking up 75 million Spotify streams.

Lorna Shore released their latest album, I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me, in September. The band will tour Europe in January and February, and the run will include one of their biggest-ever headline shows, performing to 10,000 people at Alexandra Palace in London.

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.

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