According to TMZ, METAL CHURCH vocalist Mike Howe’s official cause of death has been determined to be asphyxia due to hanging. A spokesperson for the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Dept. has said that authorities are now calling it a suicide.
Police responded to a call Monday morning (July 26) just after 10 a.m. in Eureka, California reporting a death at a residence. Upon arrival, they found the 55-year-old singer dead on the scene.
According to police, drugs and alcohol are not believed to be factors and no controlled substances or paraphernalia were located at the scene.
Howe rejoined METAL CHURCH in April 2015 after over 20 years away from the group.
During the sessions for the “XI” album, Mike spoke about his return to METAL CHURCH, saying: “Kurdt Vanderhoof got ahold of me in August of 2014, and he proposed [me] coming back to the band. He said Ronny [Munroe] left the band and he didn’t really wanna carry on with METAL CHURCH unless maybe I would consider coming back. So I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’m open to it. But let’s see what kind of music we can come up with.’ So Kurdt went back to the studio and started writing songs in the vein of ‘Hanging In The Balance’, where we left off twenty years ago, and he sent them to me over the Internet. And I was, like, ‘Damn! The guy still has it and he’s doing great work.’ So he sent me another batch, and that batch was just as good [as], if not better than, the other. So, from there, I said, ‘Well, I can’t say no to this. And let’s just see how it goes.’ And we started writing lyrics and getting together, and it’s now morphed into this, being back in Aberdeen in the studio making the new METAL CHURCH record.”
METAL CHURCH’s latest release was “From The Vault”, which dropped in April 2020 via Rat Pak Records.
Original METAL CHURCH singer David Wayne passed away in May 2005 from complications following a car crash at 47 years of age.