Boysetsfire have confirmed the death of co-founding drummer Matt Krupanski. The band issued a statement on March 28th, and the words landed hard — not like a press release, but like a group of people who actually lost someone.
"We hate to write this. Today the BSF family lost one of our founding members, our drummer Matt Krupanski."
No cause of death has been disclosed.
Matt Krupanski co-founded Boysetsfire in October 1994 in Newark, Delaware. He was there at the absolute beginning — the basement rehearsals, the demos, the first time this band figured out they were on to something.
From the debut single "Consider" in 1995 to the The Day the Sun Went Out in 1997, through the band's most critically regarded work on After the Eulogy (2000) and Tomorrow Come Today (2003), and into the grinding final statement of The Misery Index: Notes from the Plague Years (2006) — Krupanski's drumming was the rhythmic spine of everything Boysetsfire built during their original run.
When the band announced their hiatus in 2007, that should have been the end. But Boysetsfire reunited in October 2010, and Krupanski came back with them. His brother Marc played bass alongside him during that stint — a detail the band mentioned in their statement. He remained with the group through December 2012.
After Boysetsfire, Krupanski went on to drum in Bound and Buried and Young Lady. He leaves behind a daughter, Georgie.
Boysetsfire's statement doesn't read like something filtered through management. It reads like loss — specific, strange, personal. Fragments of memory spilled out in public because there was nothing else to do.
They wrote about picking Krupanski up from high school for the band's first tour — his parents had to give permission for him to leave early. They wrote about writing After the Eulogy and "Rookie" in his parents' basement. About smoking cigars on a beach in North Carolina. About "his weird ass drummer gang with Tucker from Thursday, Mike from the Souls and Brandon from Rise Against."
That last line says something. Krupanski wasn't just a drummer for hire — he was embedded in the fabric of a specific time and place in hardcore history, connected to some of the scene's most important people.
They mentioned his side project, Pussy Tim and the Mother Fuckers — a band that performed at what was supposed to be a sparsely attended festival until the lights came up and 25,000 people were there.
The statement closes on his daughter Georgie. The band says they're planning a fundraiser — for college or "whatever the family decides."
"Matt you are missed and we love you. –BSF"
Newark, Delaware is not a city anyone builds a mythology around. But Boysetsfire built one anyway.
They came up at the exact moment when hardcore was figuring out it didn't have to be a straight line — that clean vocals and screaming could coexist, that political fury and melody didn't cancel each other out. Their 2000 record After the Eulogy became a blueprint. If you heard it at the right age, you probably know exactly where you were.
The band toured with Snapcase, played Warped Tour, split records with Coalesce and Shai Hulud, and managed to be politically confrontational without becoming a parody of itself. Nathan Gray's vocals carried the sermons. But Krupanski held the whole thing together underneath it.
When the revival wave started pulling every late-'90s and early-2000s hardcore band back out of the woodwork — The Used, Saves the Day, Taking Back Sunday, Thursday — Boysetsfire was part of that conversation without being embarrassing about it. That's not easy.
Boysetsfire have not announced any shows or activity tied to Krupanski's passing. The fundraiser for his daughter is in the planning stages according to the band's statement.
The hardcore community has been responding to the news throughout Sunday morning. Krupanski's connections ran deep — Tucker Rule from Thursday, Mike from The Bouncing Souls, Brandon Barnes from Rise Against are all mentioned in the statement. When a scene is small enough and tight enough that you know exactly who drummed with whom in which basement, a loss like this echoes.
For anyone who wasn't in the room then: go back to After the Eulogy. Put on "The Misery Index." Let the record do the explaining. The Boysetsfire catalog is available on Amazon if you want to revisit it today.
Matt Krupanski was part of building something real. That counts.
A fundraiser for Krupanski's daughter Georgie is being planned by the band. Details have not yet been announced. Metal Mantra will update this post when information becomes available.
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