Scars That Stay
Some records get welded to a specific time in your life, and Shaun Glass helped make two of mine. SOiL’s Scars and Redefine were a ton of fun, the kind of records I’d blast in the car with friends after we’d been up all night playing video games. Shaun Glass has passed away, and even though he walked away from that band almost twenty years ago, this one still lands hard.
Glass, a founding member of SOiL who also logged time in Broken Hope and, most recently, Repentance, died today, July 1. His old SOiL bandmates posted a farewell, admitting they’d been estranged since his 2007 departure but calling him “an integral part of SOiL in the early years.” Nonpoint’s Robb Rivera, a close friend of 12 to 15 years, wrote the tribute that hits hardest, calling Glass his “metal brother” and “one of the biggest metal lifers I’ve ever known.” Glass is survived by his wife Michelle and son Maddux.
Those early SOiL albums were a moment. Scars put the band on the map in 2001, Redefine kept it going, and Glass’s guitar work was a big part of why they connected at all. SOiL never quite got back there after he left. The lineup kept going, the records kept coming, but the version of the band that mattered most to a lot of us was the one Glass helped build. That’s not a knock on anyone who came after. It’s just the truth about how those records land.
This is a loss for the metal and hard rock worlds both. Glass spent his whole life inside this music, and the tributes pouring in from bandmates, peers, and fans say everything about what he meant to the people around him.
Rest easy, Shaun.
Source: SOiL / Nonpoint’s Robb Rivera