Sean Reinert, Death and Cynic Drummer, Dead at 48

Heavy metal drummer Sean Reinert, a former member of the bands Death and Cynic, died Friday night at his California home. He was 48 years old. No cause of death has been revealed, reports Blabbermouth. Law enforcement sources later told TMZ that Reinert was found by a family member at his San Bernardino home just before 9 p.m. Friday. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he could not be revived. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

No foul play is suspected. An autopsy has not been conducted yet.

“I am truly without words at the death of my friend and colleague Sean Reinert,” Death manager Eric Greif wrote on the band’s Facebook page. “I just got off the phone with Sean’s husband Tom. There are no details as of yet. My love and best wishes go out to his family. There are no more words.”

Reinert was a founding member of Cynic with guitarist Paul Masvidal and became a pioneering member of the progressive metal and technical death metal genres. In 1991, Reinert and Masvidal joined Death to perform on their Human album before they rejoined Cynic to release their first album, Focus, in 1993.

Cynic initially broke up after Focus was released though, and Reinert and Masvidal moved to Los Angeles, where they wrote and performed for TV shows and movies. In 1999, Masvideal and Reinert founded Æon Spoke, which released albums in 2004 and 2007.

In 2007, Cynic came together again to release Traced in Air and tour. They followed that album up with the EPs Re-Traced in 2010 and Carbon-Based Anatomy in 2011. In 2014, they released the album Kindly Bent to Free Us, which turned out to be the last time Reinert recorded with the group.

Reinert’s departure from the band was not without controversy. After completing a September 2015 Japan tour, he said their performances “were not up to par” and there was an “accumulation of differences” in creative direction for the group, reports Blabbermouth.

It was not until 2017 that Reinert finalized his departure from the band and reached a settlement with Masvidal on the group’s name, reports Loudwire.

Before the group’s split, Reinert and Masvidal made headlines in 2014 when they came out as gay in a Los Angeles Times interview.

“Gay people are everywhere, doing every job, playing every kind of music and we always have been,” Reinert said at the time. “It’s taken me years to finally be brave enough to say, ‘If you have a problem with that, then throw out our records. That’s your problem, not mine.’”

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