Chad Gilbert, founding guitarist, songwriter and central creative force in New Found Glory, has died aged 45. His wife, Lisa Cimorelli, and his bandmates announced that he died peacefully in his sleep on September 20, surrounded by family and friends. Cimorelli and his mother were beside him.
Gilbert remained creatively active through years of serious illness. New Found Glory released Listen Up! in February, made while he was undergoing intensive cancer treatment. In June, he returned to the stage in Nashville after emergency brain surgery earlier in the year.
The sound of New Found Glory was, in large part, his sound
Gilbert was central to how New Found Glory sounded. His riffs, backing vocals, songwriting instincts and command of momentum helped define the band from its earliest South Florida years through its rise as one of American pop-punk’s most durable names.
Formed in 1997, New Found Glory fused hardcore energy with huge melodic choruses. New Found Glory, Sticks and Stones and Catalyst established a template hundreds of bands would borrow: fast, physical guitars that never sacrificed the emotional directness of a pop song.
Gilbert’s work also extended beyond his own band. As a teenager, he fronted influential hardcore group Shai Hulud. He later built a substantial production career, working with artists including A Day To Remember, H2O and Terror. That work kept him active across both hardcore and pop-punk, not only within New Found Glory.
“Chad’s guitar playing, songwriting, humor, and relentless drive helped shape New Found Glory for nearly three decades.”
New Found Glory kept the immediacy that first made the songs matter while allowing the people making and hearing them to grow older with the music.
Listen Up! was made through treatment
Gilbert first disclosed a rare adrenal gland cancer diagnosis in 2021, then underwent further treatment when the disease returned and spread. Earlier this year, three brain tumours were discovered after he began losing control of his left hand and leg, prompting emergency surgery.
That experience also entered the way Gilbert spoke about the record.
Speaking to Kerrang! in February about making Listen Up!, Gilbert put it plainly: “I don’t take that pain and waste it. I take it and turn it into joy.”
That idea runs through the album. When BLUNT covered the record’s announcement, New Found Glory framed it around hope, growth and what can survive hard periods. In hindsight, those words carry more weight, but Listen Up! should not be flattened into a farewell. Gilbert was writing from inside his life, not looking back from beyond it.
A legacy beyond nostalgia
There is a version of New Found Glory’s story that traps the band in the early 2000s: Warped Tour, studded belts, burned CDs and a generation learning that heartbreak sounded better at 180 beats per minute. Gilbert’s career resists that framing.
The band lasted because the songs kept belonging to people long after the era that produced them. Younger artists absorbed Gilbert’s guitar language; older fans carried the records into adulthood. He continued writing, producing and participating in a scene he helped shape, rather than treating it as a museum piece.
His influence cannot be reduced to nostalgia, illness or a final performance. It lives in the musical vocabulary he helped popularise: hardcore’s physical force, pop’s directness, and the belief that speed and melody can sharpen each other rather than compete.
His bandmates said Gilbert’s influence would remain part of New Found Glory “with every note we play”. Their statement did not address the band’s future live plans. That omission is understandable: for New Found Glory, the loss is personal before it is historical.
Gilbert is survived by his wife Lisa, daughter Lily, mother Jackie and brother Brian. The records remain the clearest account of what he made: urgent, melodic music designed to keep moving.
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