In Memoriam: Travis Criscola of Cute Lepers (1985-2009)

Our condolences go out to 8th Annual IMA Punk Album Winning band, The Cute Lepers. The band's guitarist, Travis Criscola, passed away Saturday, March 28th.

The Cute Lepers posted this:

"Early the morning of March 28, in Cincinnati our friend and band-mate Travis Criscola passed away in his sleep. He was 24. Travis was guitarist in the Cute Lepers for the last six months. We're gonna really miss him. We feel that it's appropriate and absolutely not in bad taste to disclose the cause of death of our friend. Travis combined alcohol and pills, then went to sleep and never woke up. It was an accident.

Travis was not any kind of a habitual drug user. I'm a man who has left drugs and alcohol alone for over a decade and I just wont work with people who are mixed up with narcotics. It is rare to find a rock n' roll musician in his early twenties who doesn't get caught up in hitting the bars and going to parties on tour, and Trav was just one of those ones who made a really bad decision. He naively took some type of pills on top of the beer he was drinking and that's it."

---Steve E. Nix (Guitar, Lead Vox)