Ex-Every Time I Die guitarist/pro wrestler Andy Williams explains how wrestling is like writing a rock song

Andy Williams as The Butcher in AEW — (Image credit: AEW / YouTube)

Former Every Time I Die guitarist Andy Williams has carved out an excellent side-career for himself in recent years. The axeman has always looked like a fella that can handle himself, and he took that image one step further when he started to try his hand at professional wrestling in the mid-2010s.

Eventually, he'd sign with major wrestling company AEW - currently home to such legends of the squared circle as Chris Jericho, Sting, CM Punk and the Hardy Boyz - tearing his way through the roster under the moniker of The Butcher (a name he's wrestled under for some years now).

On a new podcast with wrestling personality and television presenter Renée Paquette, Williams discusses the similarities between his job as a guitarist and his job as a grappler - and it's all to do with his unique way of writing music.

"I don't know how to read music," he explains. "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."

Williams then goes on to compare his approach to wrestling matches - which are usually structured in a specific way by their its participants to tell a story that will entertain the crowd - to his approach to songwriting.

"Wrestling, to me, is like writing a song," he says. "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."

Every Time I Die suddenly imploded at the start of the year due to rising tensions and legal issues within the band. Their break-up was a shock to many fans given that their most recent album, the critically acclaimed Radical, was released only a few months prior.

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.