Rick Froberg, the strident frontman with US post-hardcore bands Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes, Pitchfork and Obits, has died aged 55.
His death was announced by longtime collaborator John Reis, who wrote on Instagram:
Rick passed away suddenly last night from natural causes. His art made life better. The only thing he loved more than art and rock n roll was his friends. He will forever be remembered for his creativity, vision and his ability to bring beauty into this world. I love you, Rick. I will miss you for the rest of my life.
The singer and guitarist was acclaimed for pairing the immediacy of punk with inventive playing and unselfconsciously impassioned singing that would influence the emo subgenre of the 1990s onwards. Drive Like Jehu’s 1994 album Yank Crime featured 10-minute songs, choppy rhythms and glacial tempos alongside the usual punk energy, and it has long been regarded as one of the key documents of the US punk underground, while Hot Snakes’ more raw and straightforward sound stretched across four acclaimed albums.
Froberg was also a successful visual artist who created energetic pop art cover designs for his own releases as well as those by Reis’s band Rocket From the Crypt.
Froberg and Reis formed the quartet Pitchfork in 1986 in San Diego, releasing an EP and then an album, Eucalyptus, in 1990. After they split the pair joined with the rhythm section of another recently defunct group, Night Soil Man, to form Drive Like Jehu, who released their self-titled debut in 1991 and Yank Crime – a small but influential discography that informed similarly adventurous bands such as At the Drive-In and the Blood Brothers. The band split as Reis’s Rocket From the Crypt became increasingly successful, but they reformed for live shows between 2014 and 2016.
Froberg and Reis reconvened in Hot Snakes in 1999, playing bracing garage punk. After releasing three albums between 2000 and 2004, they split in 2005, but reformed in 2010 and later released another album, the acclaimed Jericho Sirens. He recently announced that a fifth album was “very near done”.
Froberg also played in another band without Reis, Obits, who released three albums between 2009 and 2013.
