Rock Guitarist Massimo Morante Dead at 69

Guitarist Massimo Morante, a founding member of the Italian prog-rock band Goblin, died on June 23, the band announced. Morante was 69. The group is best known internationally for its creepy soundtracks to the iconic horror movies Suspiria and Dawn of the Dead.

“Goblin announces with a heavy heart and in total disbelief, the passing of founder and guitar master Massimo Morante,” the group wrote in a Facebook statement. Morante’s daughter, Valerie Morante, also published a statement confirming the sad news. “It is with indescribable pain, a pain that trumps words, that breaks the breath and hammer the heart, that I announce the death of my father, Massimo Morante,” Valerie wrote in Italian. The family held Morante’s funeral on June 25 at the Church of Artists in Piazza del Popolo in Rome.

Goblin was founded as Cherry Five and is better known around the world for providing scores to Italian horror films during the 1970s. They worked with Dario Argento on Prodondo Rosso (Deep Red; 1975) and the epic Suspiria (1977). In 1978, they scored the Italian versions of American filmmaker George A. Romero’s vampire movie Martin and the zombie hit Dawn of the Dead.

After Dawn of the Dead, Goblin began to fracture, notes Rolling Stone. Morante and only two other members of the band worked on Argento’s 1982 film Tenebre. Morante also recorded two solo albums in the early 1980s. The group reunited in 2000 to work on Argento’s Non-Ho Sleep, but the reunion was short-lived. In 2005, they called their reunion group Back To Goblin. Goblin reunited again in 2013 for their first North American tour, which included a complete live performance of their Suspiria score.

The original Goblins lineup included Morante on guitars, Maurizio Guarini on keyboards, bassist Fabio Pignatelli, drummer Agostino Marangolo, and keyboardist Aidan Zammit. Morante, keyboardist Claudio Simonetti, Pignatelli, and drummer Walter Martino were the lineup on the Prodondo Rosso score. The Suspirua lineup included Morante, Simontti, Pignatelli, Marangolo, and Guarini. Members splintered off into different versions of Goblin, but the last group Murante performed with included Guarini, Pignatelli, Marangolo, and Zammit. They recorded two studio albums, Four of a Kind (2015) and their last, Fearless (37513 Zombie Ave.), released in 2008.