WTVR.com are reporting that Dave Brockie, lead singer and mastermind of Richmond-based art/shock-rock metal band GWAR died of an accidental heroin overdose, according to the State Medical Examiner’s Office.

The M.E.’s official cause of death is acute heroin toxicity, meaning it was an accident accident.

Lamb Of God frontman Randy Blythe took to Instagram shortly after the news broke and issued the following:

Here's me with Dave Brockie and Brad Roberts of GWAR in 2006. Brad and I are still here, but Dave is gone — accidental heroin overdose, as many of you heard today. Not that it really matters, because dead is dead, but I don't think Brockie was a stone-cold junkie when he died — he couldn't have done all that he did if he was strung out. He partied hard at periods, but I think he was more of a drug dabbler. But there's a lesson here — dabbling with drugs kills people dead every day, just like being fully addicted does.

I am so fucking sick of my friends dying from alcohol and drugs. Really, really, tired of it. Some of them die slow in the throes of addiction and some of them die after just doing something stupid one night after a party. Some of them fuck around and fuck around and fuck around… 'I'll get sober one day…' For most of them, that day comes for sure — when we put them in a casket.

It's better to be alive when you get sober.

In this photo I was still drinking — I am a FULL-BLOWN ALCOHOLIC. When I drink, I do crazy, really ill stuff. But I am a sober man today. I LIVE FREE. I might die surfing in the ocean tomorrow, but I will go out doing what I love, not choking on my own vomit.

Besides that, I can just try and help others, so I'm writing this to YOU — YES, YOU — you, the one who can't stop drinking and getting fired and pissing off your wife, you the one who steals pills from you friend's medicine cabinet, you the one who is in a dark hole and wants to die and the only thing that fixes it for a little while is a drink or a drug. WAKE UP. GET HELP. STOP. PLEASE, I'M FUCKING BEGGING YOU. YOU CAN DO IT. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GET SOME HELP. If I can do it, ANYONE CAN, because I was a TOTAL WRECK for YEARS. Just get some help, goddamn it. And if you haven't started, don't. JUST DON'T. There is NOTHING cool about being an alcoholic, a drug addict, or dead. Trust me. For the love of God, just don't start. Please."

Brockie, was found unresponsive by his roommate in his North Richmond home on March 23rd. Responding police investigators found evidence of heroin use, but the cause of death wasn’t finalized until toxicology tests were completed.

Read more at WTVR.com.