Former Every Time I Die guitarist and AEW wrestler Andy Williams dead at 48

Andy Williams playing guitar — (Image credit: Total Guitar Magazine/Future via Getty Images)

Andy Williams, former guitarist of New York metalcore innovators Every Time I Die and professional wrestler, has died aged 48, it has been reported. Williams collapsed while performing in a wrestling match at an event in Pennsylvania yesterday, Saturday September 5, according to TMZ. No official cause of death has been confirmed.

A founding member of Every Time I Die upon the band's formation in Buffalo, New York in 1998, Williams and his bandmates would emerge as one of the most influential forces in 21st century metalcore. Williams served as the the band's rhythm guitarist throughout their entire time together right up until their surprising implosion in 2022.

Every Time I Die produced nine studio albums, the most recent of which, Radical, was released in 2021 to critical acclaim.

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Williams was also a longtime professional wrestling fan and harboured ambitions of becoming a wrestler himself. He realised that dream after making his professional debut on the independent wrestling circuit in 2015, taking on the moniker of 'The Butcher' and forming a tag team with Jesse 'The Blade' Guilmette. The duo would receive international recognition upon appearances with powerhouse company All Elite Wrestling from 2019 onwards.

In a 2022 interview, Williams compared his career in music with his wrestling endeavours, telling Reneé Paquette's podcast: "I don't know how to read music. I just picked up a guitar and it just made sense. To me, it was more like Tetris than anything. I would just make these shapes up in my head and I would play these shapes.

"If I wrote out music, it would only make sense to me and the dudes I was in the band with. A lot of it is like X's and O's, or I'll use squares for certain things and triangles for certain things. It really turned into more of, like, a video game to me than making music."

"Wrestling, to me, is like writing a song," he added. "Once I kind of understood how to write that 'song', it was like, 'Oh, ok, that's cool - there's an intro, there's an outro, there's a chorus.' It really does work like that."

Merlin was promoted to Executive Editor of Louder in early 2022, following over ten years working at Metal Hammer. While there, he served as Online Editor and Deputy Editor, before being promoted to Editor in 2016. Before joining Metal Hammer, Merlin worked as Associate Editor at Terrorizer Magazine and has written for Classic Rock, Rock Sound, eFestivals and others. Across his career he has interviewed legends including Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy, Metallica, Iron Maiden (including getting a trip on Ed Force One courtesy of Bruce Dickinson), Guns N' Roses, KISS, Slipknot, System Of A Down and Meat Loaf. He has also presented and produced the Metal Hammer Podcast, presented the Metal Hammer Radio Show and is probably responsible for 90% of all nu metal-related content making it onto the site.