Andy Williams, Every Time I Die Founding Guitarist and Wrestler 'The Butcher,' Dies at 48

Andy Williams, founding guitarist of Buffalo metalcore band Every Time I Die and the professional wrestler known as “The Butcher,” has died at the age of 48.

Williams died on September 5, 2026 after suffering a medical emergency following a wrestling match at an Enjoy Wrestling event at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale, Pennsylvania. Enjoy Wrestling said medical personnel at the venue immediately attended to Williams and administered CPR until an ambulance arrived. He was transported to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. At publication time, an official cause of death had not been announced.

An Enjoy Wrestling representative subsequently told CBS Pittsburgh that Williams' symptoms had appeared consistent with a cardiac event, but that observation should not be confused with an official medical determination of cause of death. Williams leaves behind an unusual legacy connecting two worlds that rarely produce performers with substantial careers in both: heavy music and professional wrestling. Before wrestling audiences knew him as The Butcher, Williams spent more than two decades as the rhythm guitarist of Every Time I Die.

Formed in the Buffalo, New York area in 1998, the band developed a sound built around hardcore and metalcore aggression, complicated rhythmic changes and the increasingly recognizable guitar interplay of Williams and Jordan Buckley.

Epitaph Records describes Every Time I Die's music as combining frantic riffs, hardcore intensity and Southern-rock-influenced groove, a mixture that became increasingly identifiable across the band's catalog. Williams remained with Every Time I Die from the band's formation until its breakup in 2022 and appeared on all nine of its studio albums.

Those records trace a career lasting two decades:

Last Night in Town - 2001

Hot Damn! - 2003

Gutter Phenomenon - 2005

The Big Dirty - 2007

New Junk Aesthetic - 2009

Ex Lives - 2012

From Parts Unknown - 2014

Low Teens - 2016

Radical - 2021

The sequence is documented across the band's discography, beginning with Last Night in Town and ending twenty years later with Radical.

Williams therefore was not a guitarist who passed briefly through the group. His playing formed part of every full-length studio chapter of Every Time I Die.

Every Time I Die also has a small but direct connection to Rockum's own historical archive.

The band's fourth album, The Big Dirty, appeared in Rockum Radio's year-end ranking of albums from 2007, placing at No. 59 in a list that also included releases by Between the Buried and Me, Devin Townsend, Behemoth, Watain and other heavy-music artists from that year.

Read: Top 2007 Best Album - Rockum Radio

Nearly two decades later, that old ranking also serves as a reminder of how long Every Time I Die occupied a place in the heavy-music landscape before its final album arrived.

The band's connection to Buffalo remained central throughout its career.

In 2019, Every Time I Die was inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame, joining a regional archive that recognizes musicians and groups connected to Western New York. The Hall of Fame officially lists the band as part of its Class of 2019.

Williams was present for the induction and publicly emphasized the importance of Buffalo's support during the band's first 21 years.

That regional identity also became part of Every Time I Die's visual history.

The official video for “Map Change,” released through Epitaph Records in 2017, was filmed around Western New York and built around imagery of Buffalo and its residents.

Williams' second career developed while Every Time I Die was still active.

A longtime professional wrestling fan, he began training during the 2010s and gradually started appearing on independent wrestling shows while continuing to tour and record with the band.

He ultimately adopted the ring identity The Butcher and formed a regular tag team with Jesse Guilmette, better known as The Blade.

Their partnership became known as The Butcher and the Blade.

Williams' wrestling career moved to a much larger stage in 2019, when The Butcher and the Blade made their All Elite Wrestling debut. They became recurring performers on AEW television, with Williams maintaining the deliberately imposing visual identity that separated The Butcher from his life onstage with Every Time I Die.

What initially could have looked like a musician pursuing a side interest instead became a genuine second profession.

Williams spent approximately seven years associated with AEW and Ring of Honor, with that chapter concluding in June 2026.

Following his death, All Elite Wrestling recognized both sides of Williams' career. AEW described him as a musician who successfully transitioned into professional wrestling and emphasized the respect he had earned from colleagues inside and outside the ring. That distinction is important to understanding his career.

Williams was not simply a rock guitarist occasionally appearing at wrestling events, nor a wrestler whose musical past became trivia attached to his biography.

For years, the two careers existed simultaneously.

While Every Time I Die continued recording and touring, Williams trained and wrestled. After the band ended, professional wrestling became an even more visible part of his work.

The dissolution of Every Time I Die in January 2022 did not end Williams' involvement in music. He later became part of Atomic Rule, continuing to write and perform heavy music while pursuing his wrestling career. Only hours before his death, Williams had posted that Atomic Rule was working on new music. That detail leaves his final period particularly unfinished. After spending 24 years with Every Time I Die, Williams had moved into a new band while simultaneously maintaining the wrestling career he had built from the ground up.

Williams' death produced reactions across both communities.

Former Every Time I Die guitarist Jordan Buckley, musicians from across hardcore and metal, and numerous professional wrestlers shared memories of Williams following the news. Many of the tributes focused less on his public personas than on his humor, generosity and support for people around him.

The response reflects the unusual breadth of his professional life.

Someone encountering Williams through Every Time I Die could have followed his work since the late 1990s.

Someone discovering The Butcher through AEW television two decades later might have known him primarily as a professional wrestler.

Both audiences were following the same person.

Every Time I Die's final studio album, Radical, was released in 2021 through Epitaph Records.

The 16-track album included “Dark Distance,” “Post-Boredom,” “A Colossal Wreck,” “Thing With Feathers” and “We Go Together.”

The band broke up the following year, bringing to an end a recording history that had begun with Last Night in Town in 2001.

For Williams, Radical consequently became the final Every Time I Die studio album in a catalog on which he had appeared from beginning to end.

That continuity is one of the clearest ways to measure his musical legacy.

Nine studio albums. Twenty-four years in the same band. An entire recorded catalog with his guitar present.

Andy Williams' career is difficult to reduce to one title. For one audience, he will always be the guitarist standing beside Jordan Buckley while Every Time I Die developed from Buffalo hardcore roots into one of the enduring names of modern metalcore. For another, he was The Butcher, an imposing professional wrestler who reached national television after beginning that career considerably later than most wrestlers do. Both descriptions are accurate, but neither tells the entire story.

Williams spent 24 years helping build Every Time I Die, played on all nine of the band's studio albums, saw the group inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame, and then succeeded in turning a lifelong interest in wrestling into another professional career.

Even after Every Time I Die ended, he continued making music with Atomic Rule.

His death at 48 closes those careers unexpectedly, while the precise medical cause remains a matter for official determination rather than speculation.

What remains documented is substantial enough without exaggeration: a complete recorded history with Every Time I Die, a second career built as The Butcher, and a connection to both heavy music and professional wrestling that made Andy Williams an unusually recognizable figure in two different cultures.

Written by Gino Alache – Music Journalist

IMAGE CREDIT: Adam Gasson/Total Guitar Magazine/Future via Getty Images

Watch Every Time I Die’s official “Map Change” music video below: