All language subtitles for Into.The.Void.Life.Death.and.Heavy.Metal.S01E02.1080p.WEB.h264-GRACE[EZTVx.to]

Kurt Strubing is the founder of the black metal band.

This is Strubing with his band NME. Very heavy, very aggressive rock and roll.

Kurt Strubing with his heavy metal band, which has just signed a contract with a German label.

Kurt was in complete control of the ship.

We were just passengers.

This whole story is: “We are evil, see for yourself.”

The lyrics scared you. I felt pure evil.

Images and some kind of message.

Just a sign of the times.

Here we are, a group,

singing about death and destruction, but most metalheads are happy people.

I was eight when my father died,

As a child, I lived in ignorance. I was not allowed to watch the news or read newspapers.

But I remember, many, many years later, I googled my name.

I saw all these headlines and was like, "Huh? Click."

Kurt Strubing, 39, made headlines again almost twenty years ago.

Kurt Strubing served time for the murder of his mother in 1986.

At first you think: “No, it’s definitely not him.”

Strubing is survived by his wife and eight-year-old son.

But no, it's the same one.

Whatever ruled his soul that day,

temporary insanity, drugs, demonic possession –

The one I was looking at, whose eyes I was looking into, was no longer the same person.

This is not the Kurt I knew.

And not the Kurt I fell in love with.

You know, with all his hobbies, he really could have touched something supernatural.

If you dance with the darkness, you will get burned.

NME - from hell.

We, no matter how young we are, take on great responsibility.

Brian Llapitan, Kurt Strubing,

Scott Tinsley and Steve Mayer declared war on the world.

We at NMI are determined to get our message across.

If doubt is evil, then we are evil.

Don't be afraid.

For life to exist, there must be death.

Those who do not believe must die.

NMI.

What we were trying to say was: this is the embodiment of hatred.

That was our business back then, yes.

In 1985, the Seattle metal scene was at its peak.

Groups supported groups, people supported groups.

I worked at Gorilla Gardens.

We had two or three metal shows a week.

Soundgarden played there.

"Malfunction", which later became "Mother Love Bone".

It seemed like the Seattle scene was the place to go at that moment.

There were a lot of bands playing on Fridays and Saturdays. We all hung out there:

"Melvins" or "Nirvana".

Punks, metalheads - everyone was there and hanging out together.

It seemed like there was a group on every block.

We weren't the fastest, we weren't the most coordinated,

but the group's philosophy was chaos.

We're going to go on stage and tear this place apart, smash the hell out of it.

We were different.

We decided that if we were causing a reaction, then we were doing everything right.

Some people called us Seattle's first black metal band,

And in a way, it was a cool nickname. If it's true, that's awesome.

We just did it the best we could.

NMI was really scary, and I thought it was pretty damn cool.

Music that touches you and scares you.

And Kurt Strubing, going on stage,

I took the guitar and deliberately made it so that blood flowed from my mouth as much as possible,

to make blood flow while he plays.

It felt like you were looking at a monster.

The image was truly creepy.

Basically, I'm not sure if I want to love it, but I do.

And I was...

I was a fan within the group.

So it was kind of the best of both worlds.

Kurt was definitely the leader of the N&M.

The first time I met him was at work.

I was a dishwasher, Kurt was a prep cook.

He joked as if he were some kind of executioner.

"Now your time has come, melon."

Funny kitchen jokes.

Kurt taught me that you can't wait for life to come to you—

I need to go and grab her by the ass. I need to take action.

He spent a lot of time on cool flyers,

to attract attention to the concerts.

There was a spirit of anarchy in them.

A pair of pentagrams on top.

These images came from the dark corners of his brain.

He was definitely pushing the boundaries.

The first time I met Kurt,

when I was twelve. He moved into the house two doors down from mine.

He was different from many of the kids I knew back then.

He was always drawing or writing something.

It was dark and strange,

perhaps a reflection of where his thoughts were.

Kurt's father was an alcoholic.

He came home from work,

I would sit at the kitchen table with a bottle of Black Velvet and just drink.

Kurt's father was abusive.

Sometimes these tirades lasted for ten minutes,

and so on every day.

It must have been exhausting for him.

He was an adopted child,

the only one in the family.

And the mother compensated for the way the father treated him.

One hundred percent of her attention was on him.

They were very close.

That's how we got a guitar. That's how we got a bass. She bought them for us.

She let us rehearse until seven or eight in the evening,

which would be prohibited in my home.

I remember we played "Holy Diver" by Dio,

and his mother danced in the kitchen to this song.

And I realized: it means we play quite similarly,

so that someone understands what we are doing.

There was an assembly on the last day of school,

and we were allowed to play on it.

We started with a cover of Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil."

Ten seconds later, people simply poured out of the gym.

We looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders: “Oh my God,

"there is no one left."

And at that moment I thought: “Dude, nobody likes us, we are everyone’s enemy.”

From that day on we decided to change everything.

We liked Venom with their black metal and excellent lyrics.

When you get into music like that in 1985,

It seemed as if I had to speak like a Satanist and provoke people to think.

It seemed like the bands were competing to see who could write the meanest lyrics.

We hung out at Kurt's and listened to a lot of albums.

He was the one who got me hooked on more extreme music.

Judas Priest, Motorhead - I didn't know there was anything harder.

I absorbed it.

We scraped together some money,

recorded a demo.

Kurt sent tapes everywhere: to Germany, Sweden.

I don't know if we've achieved that scale yet,

If only he hadn't promoted us so much.

Kurt wrote a long text about the emergence of a new messiah.

I remember when this was published, I read it and thought, “This is not bad.

This is an advertisement for our group." It seemed to me,

This is an appropriate expression of our attitude.

You know, I thought it was a joke, but then I realized he took it seriously.

He claimed to be the new messiah,

and I'm like, "Oh my god, this is so cool! This is an easy sell! Yeah, this is our messiah!"

Dutch East India wasn't a metal company at all,

but I saw Charles Manson in their catalog and thought:

"I'll give it a try." It was that simple. I pitched to NMI for about six weeks and got the deal!

Okay, we're sorry we have to take drugs to cool down, but we're good guys.

We decided that since we were going to record an album, we wanted the listener to have the feeling of a live concert.

So they just hung a microphone from the ceiling and added a bunch of reverb.

And then we were like, “Okay, hopefully it will work the first time.”

At first I thought, "This sounds like total crap."

But I said to myself, “It will sound okay.”

The best part of the beauty of the ugliness of that album is the management of that feedback and that noise in such a way,

as most people didn't play back then.

Kurt's lyrics brought dark sides of reality to light.

They touched darker souls.

What happens in war,

what people do to each other.

Here it is. It's all here. We're just going to talk about it.

The song that particularly bothered me was "Unspeakable."

The third verse has some really creepy lyrics:

"Hiding in the shadows, creeping up on you. Voices from hell tell me what to do.

I will split your skull open to watch the blood flow.

Everything is blackened by death, there is no more sun.

"The Unspoken."

I thought, "Damn it.

Oh!

"This is tough."

I think he must have been afraid of something in his life too. Life is unpredictable.

Even if your lyrics flirt with dark themes, you want to give them meaning.

I think it was his way of coping.

When the album "Anholy Death" was released,

We started getting great reviews in independent, statist metal magazines.

It was wonderful.

And they were very colorful, very over-the-top.

Someone said my vocals sound like a bear gargling with razor blades.

We started getting reviews in Krim and other giant publications,

which shouldn't have been covered at all.

There was a review from "Krim",

which blew our minds. Because they had a wide reach.

It was all very large-scale and...

quite exciting because we thought, "Hey, here it is, the big start."

We came to our mailbox, and there was a letter: “Go to the postmaster.”

And he took out a bag of fan mail and threw it on the counter.

There were letters from Germany, from the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia.

Many girls sent naked photos.

There was also a lot of occult stuff like “yes, I worship the devil” and so on.

And the guys and I decided: “Let's take this to the next level.

We have a fan base in Eastern Europe – Poland, Ukraine, Belarus.”

Yes, we felt that something was happening.

We were targeting Europe. Perhaps South America.

We were going to go to Europe and play at the venues where all the European bands were playing.

And I remember thinking, because I was in high school at the time:

"As soon as school ends, I'm leaving."

I felt like I was on the brink of being able to tour with the band.

We were… I thought we were very close to it, and everything seemed to be going in that direction.

According to police,

Someone in the apartment dialed nine-one-one and hung up.

Dispatchers traced the call.

When police arrived, they found the suspect naked and covered in blood.

Steve called me and said, "I have bad news."

I'm like, "What? The concert was cancelled?"

And he said, "No. Kurt killed his mom."

Spring break April eighty-six.

NME played at a house party.

One fan had a suburban house with a bunch of reptiles.

There we could hang out and, well, relax completely.

It was the eighties, there were a lot of drugs around.

People told me that maybe he took some kind of synthetic fucking drug,

I think it's homemade.

As the party was drawing to a close,

Kurt was offered a ride home,

and someone was holding a baseball bat.

He then grabbed this bat,

picked her up and hit him pretty hard.

It wasn't in Kurt's character.

There was some kind of paranoia.

The next day I wasn't there, but I heard about some weird shit.

On Sunday, Kurt and I rented a carpet shampooer.

When you have band rehearsals at a party house,

everything could get out of control. We wanted to remove,

take out the equipment and clean the carpet for the owner.

But all this time I look at Kurt and see this sparkle in his eyes.

I say, "Dude, what's wrong with you? What's going on?" And he says, "Nothing.

I'm tired. Or I don't know. Or I need to think."

When you buy a carpet cleaning machine, it comes with a bottle of the recommended product. Well, it was.

And suddenly, for some reason, he took a sip of this remedy.

I'm like, "Oh my God, dude!"

Scott called me and said,

that Kurt is behaving abnormally.

I asked Kurt why he drank the carpet cleaner.

And he said, "I thought it said robot cleaning."

We decided that it might be better to take him home.

He lived with his mother in an apartment.

And Scott drove him home that night.

I thought, "We'll just get a good night's sleep and talk about it tomorrow."

Because I've never seen anything like it. But I decided,

We've simply gone too far. We need to take a break.

On Monday morning I was on my way to work. I was on the bus,

I had a Walkman player with a radio.

I heard the news that there was a murder in the King County area.

And... I get it.

The woman, 53-year-old Darley Strubing, was found dead in the apartment.

The autopsy is complete and shows

that she died from chopped wounds to the head and stab wounds to the chest.

There was no Internet, so we had to wait until eleven for news.

My parents and I were sitting and watching, and when I saw the footage of him, his eyes were different.

It was as if his soul had disappeared behind them.

And then the details emerged.

They hit like a sledgehammer.

Something happened in that apartment on Sunday evening.

I think whatever happens to Kurt—

his paranoia, his delirium, what he saw, felt, believed in,

he decided that he was some kind of dark entity.

Something inside him snapped.

Kurt appears to have killed her with an axe,

and also with scissors.

He called the police, went outside, naked.

And they arrested him.

I'm like, "What?! No way!"

That's the only thing I could think of: "Fuck it!"

It was devastating, heartbreaking,

It was incredible. It was more incredible than anything I've ever experienced.

The most shocking, most mind-blowing event of my life, multiplied by a thousand.

It was... yeah, fucked up. Total fucked up.

Darlie had no family, just her and Kurt,

That's all.

Her colleagues organized a small service at the local church.

There was a lot of anger directed towards Kurt.

Many people felt disgusted,

and they talked about it openly.

They said, "But you were in a band with him." Yeah, but I didn't know how to feel either.

I loved his mother and often called her "mom".

I remember her dancing in the kitchen while we played songs.

Losing that in itself was...

It was terribly painful for me.

People were like, 'What's wrong with you for hanging out with this guy?'

Wine by association.

Kurt was sent to Western State Hospital, where the mentally ill are taken.

And as soon as they could,

We went to Western State to see him.

I think we were very naive and didn't understand,

what we are about to... see.

We probably didn't fully understand the gravity of what was happening.

Being in this huge psychiatric center was reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

You look at your friend through six inches of plexiglass.

It was very difficult.

I could feel his complete emptiness. It was as if I could sense it.

And I have never experienced anything like this in my life.

As far as I understand,

before he was sent to Western State for a psychiatric evaluation,

He smashed his head on the cell floor.

He jumped headfirst from the top bunk in prison.

That's when he was transferred to Western State.

Realizing what happened,

despite the fact that he always spoke about his mother with great love...

He probably regretted not killing himself at that very moment.

After what happened, every day was like denial.

"Is this real? Did this really happen?"

I didn't want anything to do with black metal or Satanism. It didn't particularly scare me...

until Kurt did what he did.

The song "Unspeakable" has taken on a new meaning.

When you start hearing the lines, they sound eerily familiar.

There's a line in there that says, "I'll split your skull open just to watch the blood flow."

That's exactly what happened.

He killed his mother with an axe and scissors.

You can't help but wonder if this is connected.

I began to understand that everything he wrote, said, or did, he took seriously.

I was very, very, very deeply shocked by everything I read.

When he spoke to the operator at nine-one-one,

He mentioned that it was "the work of God."

It scared the shit out of me because it brought me back to what he was saying about,

that he is the new messiah.

Psychiatric reports said,

that he considered his mother a robot.

He said he wanted to experiment to see if robots could be replaced.

The truth is, it wasn't Satanism.

This was the act of a mentally ill person.

I felt a little guilty.

We brought his mother to this situation,

they took him to her.

And he was unwell, he was clearly unwell.

But we don't...

I didn't know.

I was young and had no experience in such things.

You see, we didn't really talk about such topics in the eighties.

When you are twenty years old and you are not a professional in this field,

I just thought it was weird.

Psychiatrists and doctors agreed that he had suffered a psychotic break.

That he was not in control of himself at that moment.

He snapped.

We don't know why he snapped,

and he might break down again.

Kurt was found guilty of second-degree murder.

He admitted his guilt.

He was given eight years.

And he spent these eight years not in a hospital, but in prison.

It is one of the most brutal murders in King County history.

I thought he should have gotten life, whether he was insane or not.

I immediately stopped working with the group.

I know many people didn't understand.

Many people thought that I should distance myself from all of this completely.

I worked with my father,

I was digging some hole, leaned on the shovel and started crying.

And my father said to me: “You still haven’t recovered from this?”

He did everything he could to support me.

To toughen me up.

But, with all due respect to my father, what I needed more that day was his hug.

I knew I would never get answers.

But I knew that I loved my friend and I said to myself: I will support him.

I don't really believe in people, but I believed in him.

Maybe I was a fool, but that's how I felt.

He called me.

It was a collect call. And he sounded more like himself in conversation.

He was sorry, he was upset.

I urged him to seek help.

I'm not a doctor, but I think about his childhood and how his foundation may have cracked.

We all learned that Kurt lost his mind as a teenager.

That's probably why we understood it and forgave it.

I don't think I could come to terms with what happened.

But he could come to terms with the very idea of loyalty - staying close to the one who screwed up.

But it was beyond his control.

He clearly had a very traumatized soul, which we didn't know at the time.

He wrote many letters.

Most often it’s about how he spends his time usefully.

He went through his studies, got a diploma in graphic arts, wrote songs, of course.

I used some NME songs and changed some things in them.

He rewrote "Unspeakable."

It was precisely this passage that tormented him.

"Maybe I've gone too far."

Most of the letters I received from him were about

that when he comes out, we will continue,

If I'm with him, go ahead.

He was still encouraging us.

He had court orders to meet with a consultant.

But every time we discussed it, I was left with the impression,

that he did not receive any benefit from it.

I didn't like it.

Thought he still had to work on himself.

And so... I kept him at a little distance.

You think you know everything about a person if you hang out in a group.

But then he kills the one who is closest.

The more I thought about it,

the more it came to me: what if I make him angry?

Will he try to kill me when he gets out?

He is a murderer.

April 12, 1994. Kurt was released.

We went after him.

He didn't really like hugging, but I was the opposite in this regard.

I love hugging people. So I hugged him.

I bought fast food - after eight years in prison, the first thing you want is

it's to eat normal food.

The plan was this: as soon as he got out,

We'll start jamming like NME again.

Like in the Blues Brothers. Like, "Hey, we're getting the band back together."

Yes, the metal world has changed a lot,

but we hoped that people would be interested in what we were doing.

I just wanted those eight years to be erased and we could go back to how it was.

His guitar playing has improved so much, it's just amazing.

The band is back together,

and I called my sister and asked, "Hey, do you want to go?"

Band rehearsal.

This is a band rehearsal.

It was business as usual for us,

especially when we first started dating, we always went to rehearsals.

Well, he does what he loves.

Yes.

The guys are together again now.

It was a typical house party - lots of beer and a loud band playing in the garage.

I met a lot of people that night, but I met Kurt.

He was very handsome.

A bit of a rough guy, but that's the kind of guy I liked.

I knew right away that Kurt and I would probably be together forever.

I just knew.

Do you understand?

He was a joker, very, very funny, very cheerful.

I knew he was released from prison.

But I honestly couldn't believe it was him.

Have you ever been afraid because of his past?

Never.

Never.

The thought didn't even occur to me.

I trusted him from the very beginning.

The first time Kurt and I talked about the past,

It was evening and we were taking a bath together.

I just wanted him to explain it to me,

what happened.

I just wanted to hear it from his lips.

For me, this was a condition to move forward.

Of course, this was not an easy thing to discuss.

He compared his feelings to the Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb".

He didn't remember anything.

He only knew what people told him or what he read.

It was hard to listen to.

A very difficult conversation.

He seemed to feel better when he was finally able to talk a little.

Our life together was not about the past.

Our life together was about the present and how happy we were and where our future was going.

Angie and Kurt had been dating for quite a while. And my mom called me and basically,

said, "I know they're in love. I know the relationship is growing,

and I'm afraid that the same thing will happen to Angie that happened to Kurt's mother."

And I replied, “Well, you have two options: either join and support them, or lose your daughter.”

My mother came to terms with the fact that we would be together and recognized the Kurt I knew. She fell in love with him.

She became his new mother.

Kurt has a family again.

This shows how much they trusted and loved him.

It’s hard to imagine that many would accept this calmly.

It must have been hard,

but he proved that he had changed.

He tried to be the best version of himself.

You can't undo the past, but you can try your best. I think that's what he did.

Look how proud Kurt is here.

And he's still in hospital uniform.

To him.

Proud dad.

Holding her baby, perhaps for the first time in her life.

Jared was born a couple of weeks premature, on Valentine's Day.

The irony is that it's Kurt's mom's birthday.

We were both nervous. Kurt much more so than I was.

He had a lot of worries about fatherhood.

But he simply got into the role.

What kind of father was Kurt?

Wonderful.

He always put the child first.

Did everything.

"Do you want me to change your diaper? Do you want me to stay up all night?"

What are your first memories of your father?

Music.

Always played.

Either he is there by himself or just in the house.

Music constantly.

I remember we always played.

He took the guitar, and I hit the drums nearby.

This was what you wait for all day.

At school, you tap your pencils on your desk, and then he takes you and says, “Well, let’s go and light it up.”

Kurt did not repeat his father's mistakes.

He was a good father.

Very involved in his son's life.

I got him a job at my place. I told the manager the whole situation 100% honestly.

She said, "Well, everyone needs a second chance."

Kurt proved to everyone every day that we were a normal family.

And I tried very hard.

Two cars in the driveway. We both work nine to five. Our own house.

Ideal life.

Kurt got to the point where

that his life was like everyone else's. Household chores.

Child care. Work care. And, of course, he never wanted to talk much about the past.

To achieve all this and keep it in your head all the time...

He always said, "I don't want to think about it more than I have to."

He was always trying to make life fun.

"Let's go to the park. Let's go riding bikes."

He helped coach my baseball team.

I don't know if he did it consciously to keep himself busy, or if it was just his nature.

Maybe he kept himself busy all the time,

so as not to sit in my own thoughts.

The group was always there.

It was his salvation.

His way of moving on.

There was music before, and there is music after. My father and his bandmates became like brothers,

a real family.

We rehearsed three times a week and were damn good.

We had about fifty, sixty, seventy songs.

He has accumulated a ton of material.

Of course, everything was completely different,

than during the times of "Anholy Death".

And yes, Brian is a great singer, nothing bad about him,

but Brian was not part of this circle.

I didn't write him anything, I just went into the shadows.

But he found me and said, “Hey, long time no see.

"Would you like to come back to the group by any chance?"

When I saw him,

It was like meeting an ex-girlfriend.

He had changed a lot by this time.

His whole behavior was different.

Still a joker, still cheerful,

but the darkness disappeared.

And that's what surprised me the most.

After such horror you always think:

what if it's still out there somewhere?

But if I had felt even a hint, I would have left immediately.

And so it’s like with a bicycle.

Just got back in and drove off.

As if no time had passed.

The idea of playing Anholy Des started to float around again.

Kurt was already preparing a second reissue of the album with a German label.

It was a big deal. Like, let's release it,

We'll start the concerts, then we'll work on new material.

That was the main impetus.

We started moving forward, we had a goal.

It's time to play "Anholy Death" live with the original line-up.

The irony is that this also turned out to be the last concert.

Breaking News: Man falls from West Seattle lower bridge to death.

Kurt Strubing's car flew over a bridge, and the 39-year-old musician died on the spot.

You may have seen the footage yesterday of a crumpled car that fell from the Harbour Island Bridge, which was open for ships.

On the news I saw our car turned upside down on the road below.

Everything inside me sank.

Eyewitnesses say Strubing broke through the barriers on the bridge.

Police are still trying to figure out what happened.

Two police officers from Des Moines came to us and confirmed that Kurt was dead.

It was a shock. It felt like a bad dream.

It's like a joke. You think, "No, this isn't real."

But it turned out to be real.

He crashed into a barrier that was capable of stopping a truck.

At full speed.

There were no problems with the car. They told me straight out: he took his own life.

He left work in the middle of the day, without reason.

I took a road I usually didn't take.

Turned off the bridge.

I just figured his demons had caught up with him.

Nobody knows what exactly pushed him that day.

Everything he had to go through in his life: the story with his father, with his whole life...

It's hard to imagine how to live with this.

Was it just from stress in life, from fatigue, or from something else?

I will never know.

He must have felt that something was wrong.

I remember my mom asking Kurt point blank:

"Can you promise you won't do to my daughter what you did to my mother?"

And Kurt replied, "I can't promise, but I can promise,

that before I hurt anyone, I will kill myself."

And he kept his word.

I know how much he loved his son. How much he loved his wife. And how much he hated what he did in the past.

But if he felt that way, why didn't he tell me?

It breaks my heart doubly.

Witnesses say the bridge was raised at the time. Strubing drove out of the convoy and crashed through two barriers.

Sad news.

But not unexpected. This was a man with a mental breakdown,

who, in my opinion, was never given the help he needed.

Did he have any treatment, medication?

No.

There was no rehabilitation treatment for anything.

System not sharpened under...

rehabilitation.

She's just not for it.

My life changed a lot when my father died.

I felt lonely.

I lost...

childhood, in a sense.

I sank into a hole for years. I decided to drown all my feelings in drugs and alcohol.

And so it was for almost ten years.

My mom and dad took on most of the care for Jared,

because I couldn't.

They began to play a much bigger role in his life until I...

was forgotten.

Here is my man.

It's been almost twenty years since I heard his voice.

Hard.

He had so many people around him,

who loved him very much and also...

took care of him.

And he didn't want to hurt anyone.

That's why...

I think...

I think he decided to take matters into his own hands to prevent this from happening.

And how can I feel anything but gratitude?

When Kurt died...

It may sound disgusting, but I felt relieved.

It must have been a relief for him too. It was a very dark chapter in history.

Yes, it was shocking, but inside there was a feeling:

“Well, here it is at last, my friend.

"You are free."

That's how I kept it in my memory.

Maybe his pain was finally over.

The best ending would have been if he had asked for help.

I don’t know if any doctor ever told him: “When you start feeling this way, go to the hospital.”

He tried his best to live as best he could. He did everything possible.

If I had known he was suffering, I think we would all have been willing to help him get what he needed.

There was a good memorial.

Then we went to his wife’s house, made a fire, cried a lot, talked a lot.

The metal community rallied around him,

Everyone was very caring and considerate of him and what he had done.

He was a man who was passionate about music.

Who loved to share, grow and create.

It was an honor for me to play with him.

"Anholy Death" still sounds powerful to me.

Many metalheads still have this record in their collection,

and they love her.

I never thought she would survive in people's hearts and minds.

She always seems to come back up again.

But if young people find her and love her, that’s great.

For a long time I couldn't listen to her,

but I consider it the greatest American black metal album.

And I love the time we spent together,

and all the stories we've lived through together.

You can't judge him by his crime alone.

You can, but then you miss out on what he was really like.

I want to shed light on the Kurt I knew.

That's why it's important to me.

A bandmate.

Another.

Husband.

Father.

It's important to me to share how special Kurt was.

I have a tattoo: "family"

Here I have "Kurt Strubing", and also the date of birth and death,

This is the darkest, boldest tattoo on my arm. It's the first thing I see when I look down.

And she constantly reminds me where I come from.