Former Nevermore guitarist Jeff Loomis, who is now a member of Arch Enemy, recently spoke with All That Shreds and commented on the passing of Nevermore / Sanctuary vocalist Warrel Dane, who died on December 13th, 2017 in São Paulo, Brazil at the age 56, having suffered a heart attack.
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Loomis: I hadn’t seen Warrel too terribly much, maybe just a few select times since the band broke up. He passed away when I was at home during Christmas break from touring with Arch Enemy. It was a terrible experience for me to go through as with anyone who loses a close friend. I’m still grieving over it and I probably always will be for a long time. Primarily when you’ve known somebody for so long and toured the world and wrote music together, you become very close like brothers, and that’s what we were. To make a long story short Warrel was a troubled guy, he had issues with alcohol and at one point so did I. I would never single him out and say he was the sole issue of why we broke up as a band.”
I was a terrible drinker at one time in my life. I’ve been sober for five years now. I’ve gotten my life together, and I’ve got a very clear and focused mind and health wise I’m doing very well, When Warrel continued to drink, it just kept me from really talking to him a lot. I just wanted to keep my distance from that kind of thing because I was trying to live a cleaner lifestyle. The times that I did speak with him or texted him, it was always very friendly, and we told each other how we missed one another.
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There were some talks about doing a reunion and writing some more songs. So that was something I was kind of excited about and unfortunately, you know, that will never happen now. I have fantastic memories and killer music that we wrote together, and that will always be a great reminder of what we shared. I’m going to miss him very much. He was a great friend of mine, and I can’t say enough good things about him. He was an incredible lyricist and an incredible vocalist as well. He was a very different person, a tough one to figure out. He was intense with his lyrics and a brilliant guy.”
