Andy Williams, the founding guitarist of the Buffalo metalcore band Every Time I Die, has died at 48. He collapsed on September 5, 2026, after a tag-team match at an Enjoy Wrestling event in Millvale, Pennsylvania, where he wrestled as “The Butcher”.

An electric guitar on a stand at the front of an empty club stage under a single work light.
Image: Illustration generated for this article more
Every Time I Die played small stages like this for most of its 24 years.Licence: Generated, no third-party rightsThis image is an illustration generated for this article, not a photograph.

What happened in Millvale

Williams and his regular partner, Jesse “The Blade” Guilmette, had just finished their match at Mr. Small’s Theater when he went down. Enjoy Wrestling said its doctors on staff gave him CPR until an ambulance came. He was taken to a local hospital and died there that night.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed the death to TMZ. Rolling Stone reported that no cause of death was immediately known.

Twenty-four years with one band

Williams helped found Every Time I Die in 1998 and stayed as its rhythm guitarist until the band split in 2022. He played on all nine of its studio albums, the last of them Radical in 2021.

After the split, three of his former bandmates formed Better Lovers: Jordan Buckley, Steve Micciche and Clayton “Goose” Holyoak. Williams went his own way and joined Atomic Rule. Hours before his death he posted on Instagram that the band had finished writing new songs and recording demos, and said he was “stoked” to share them.

From the independent circuit to AEW

Williams started training as a wrestler in the 2010s, while still playing in Every Time I Die. He worked the independent circuits first, then made his debut as The Butcher at All Elite Wrestling in 2019. His run with AEW and its sister promotion, Ring of Honor, lasted seven years and ended in June 2026.

How the two worlds marked his death

AEW called him a “trailblazing musician” who had moved into wrestling and earned respect from his peers in and out of the ring. Better Lovers wrote on Instagram that “there will never be another Andy Williams”. The wrestler Josh Alexander said Williams was one of the best people he had ever met.

Knotfest, the festival Slipknot created, called Every Time I Die “underrated but iconically influential”. It also remembered Williams as a warm presence in every room he walked into.