Metal
Andy Williams, founding guitarist of Every Time I Die and professional wrestler, has died at forty-eight after collapsing during a wrestling event in Pittsburgh. He was performing for the promotion Enjoy Wrestling, and according to witnesses present, medical staff performed chest compressions and used a defibrillator before he was taken to hospital, where he died that same night.
No cause has been given. The news first spread through wrestling circles and was confirmed a few hours later.
Williams founded Every Time I Die in 1998 in Buffalo, with guitarist Jordan Buckley and drummer Michael Novak, and played on everything the band ever released: from the debut EP «The Burial Plot Bidding War» through to their nine studio albums, the last of which, «Radical» (2021), ended up being their farewell record. The band blended mathcore’s angularity with the swing of Southern rock and blues, with Keith Buckley on vocals, and released «Hot Damn!» in 2003. They broke up in 2022 amid an internal conflict that played out publicly, and Williams went on to a new project, Atomic Rule.
Alongside that ran his wrestling career. He debuted in the ring in 2016, and on 27 November 2019 he joined All Elite Wrestling under the character The Butcher, where he worked until his contract expired this past June.
Text by Marçal Bonastre