METAL CHURCH drummer Stet Howland says that he and the members of the band are beginning to “communicate again” for the first time since the recent passing of singer Mike Howe. “I just talked to Kurdt (Vanderhoof, guitar) last night; we just had an amazing conversation,” Stet told Chris Akin of “The Classic Metal Show” in a new interview:  “And that’s where we’re at — we’re all talking again. That’s where we’re at. But we were so broken, man — I mean, all of us. When I talked to Kurdt a few weeks ago, he was, like, ‘Mike is in Barbados.’ We were trying to digest the loss of Mike, because he was so much more than just our singer. He was Uncle Mike here at my house, and he was my friend. He would talk me down when I’d get heated, and I’d talk him down when he’d get heated. And he was such an amazing human.

“So we’re all digesting that in our own way,” he continued. “I had just lost my mom — I had a couple of losses — so I was fairly fresh at facing the realities associated with death and loss. Not everybody — everybody handles it different in our band. For some of our members, Mike ‘s in Barbados on vacation. And so we’re all slowly digesting… And we just started talking again a few weeks ago, and we’re barely talking about anything except making jokes. We have our banter, and we’re starting to joke and communicate again together. And building on the future will come. But right now it’s just… We’re just hugging right now. We’re all, like, ‘I love you, man. I love you too.’ That’s kind of where we’re at. I know everybody wants to know more. When there’s more, you’ll hear about it.”

Howe was found dead at his home in Eureka, California on July 26. According to TMZ, Howe‘s official cause of death was determined to be asphyxia due to hanging. A spokesperson for the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Dept. told the site authorities are calling it a suicide. He was only 55 years old.

TMZ stated that cops in Eureka got a call just after 10 a.m. reporting an unexpected death at a home. By the time deputies arrived, they found Howe dead at the scene.

According to police, drugs and alcohol are not believed to be factors in the death and no controlled substances or paraphernalia were located at the scene.

Four days after Howe‘s death, the surviving members of METAL CHURCH shared a statement on social media in which they blamed his suicide on the fact that he “was victimized by a failing health-care system and subsequently poisoned by the venom of Big Pharma,” a term which refers collectively to the global pharmaceutical industry. “In short and in essence, he fell prey to the real ‘Fake Healer’.”

METAL CHURCH‘s statement was quickly met with criticism from some of the band’s fans who felt that the long-running metal act was using Howe‘s death as a platform to assert its political views. As a result, METAL CHUCH pulled its original post from social media and replaced it with a revised version, in which the musicians said they were “in no way, shape or form referring to anything in relation to vaccinations, COVID or politics. We were saying our brother was hurting and while he was seeking medical care for it, the treatments he was utilizing did not protect him,” they wrote. “Otherwise, he would still be with us today.”

Howe, who fronted METAL CHURCH from 1988 until 1994, officially rejoined the band in April 2015.

Prior to joining METAL CHURCH more than three decades ago, Howe spent two years fronting California metal act HERETIC.