You didn't think Stephen Pearcy's announcement of his exit from Ratt was going to pass without comment from the remaining band members, did you?

The first response comes from drummer Bobby Blotzer, who took to his Facebook page to tell his side of the story with a post hinting at the turbulent band dynamics that have helped lead to Ratt's repeated bust-ups over the years. Apologizing to fans for the group's dirty laundry airing in public, he admitted that he'd been "driven to a breaking point with our band being held hostage every year" and said it's "nonsensical to me to have this disruption in a business weve built for the last 33 years."

Claiming that "Stephen and I have gotten along since his return in '07...aside from the fact that he basically quits every year," which has "been hard to deal with," Blotzer went on to apologize for the tempest in a teapot that erupted earlier this week when Metal Sludge published a post pointing out a Facebook comment he'd made on a picture uploaded by 'Big Brother' winner 'Evel Dick' Donato. Responding to the photo, which showed Donato sporting some semi-horrific cuts and bruises on his face, Blotzer quipped, "Why can't this happen to my singer?"

"I feel bad that I might have put a dividing line out here, and for that I'm feeling bad about it, and to a certain level feel the need to apologize to YOU Guys," Blotzer admitted in his new post. "My words were true, but the words should have stayed in my mind. And again I state that I was only kidding about this picture thing with Steve, dumb joke. You ever done that? Exactly."

Blotzer, who went on to say he's going to be deleting his Facebook account, described the way his "phone was blowing up all day" after Pearcy's announcement and added that it's "time to shut the f--- up. As hard as that feels because we, the 4 other guys in this band did nothing to merit this whole behavior from Stephen...Thanks for understanding, you guys know I, we love you so much. Ratt is my life and I'll live and die fighting for the mothership."

While no one's saying anything about a new singer yet, it seems like it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that the group will continue without Pearcy -- if he doesn't come back yet again, that is. As Blotzer put it at the end of his note, "Ratt is bigger than the sum of the parts!"

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