Black metal musician Stuart Anstis, formerly of Cradle of Filth and Bastardsun, died Sunday at 48.
“You were too beautiful for this world me Lover,” his wife Elizabeth Antoinette Anstis wrote on Facebook. “Nothing will ever be the same again … Until we meet again…”
A cause of death was not disclosed.
In a July 2018 message on Facebook, Anstis wrote: “For the people speculating about my health, I’ll have to disappoint you, I’ve never been better.”
The English musician played guitar and wrote music for Cradle of Filth from 1995 until 1999, including on the albums Dusk and Her Embrace and Cruelty and the Beast as well as a pair of EPs.
Guitarist who followed Anstis paid tribute on social media. “It was an honour performing your music,” wrote Richard Shaw, in an Instagram post. On Facebook, James McAlroy shared: "t was an honour to have been able to play the music he wrote, I always looked forward to the songs that he'd had a hand in writing."
Anstis also played in Bastardsun until the death of bandmate David Wayne in a 2005 car crash and was then a member of Ninepence.
He is survived by his wife and their children Devoran and Saoirse.