Tampa’s Ralph Santolla, who died on June 6, 2018. Credit: By Generale Lee [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons

To many, Tampa is the death metal capital of the world. Today, that community’s hearts sit heavy after saying goodbye to guitarist Ralph Santolla, who died on June 6.

Santolla — who played in influential bands like Obituary, Deicide and Sebastian Bach — fell into a coma last week after suffering a heart attack on May 29. The family of the 51-year-old announced that he would be taken off life support earlier this week. (via Billboard).

Santolla’s mom, Sue Santolla-Rocha, confirmed his death on Wednesday via Facebook, adding that friends told her that Santolla was now playing music for his grandmother.

“It just made me laugh to visualize Ralph playing heavy metal for his Nannie. OMG….it would be so funny,” she wrote. “His Nannie was an amazingly strong woman and she would tell him, cut it down, and play something decent.”

Decent is an understatement.

Obituary and Deicide were the sound of a generation. Santolla was an in-demand axe-man and personality who also toured with Death, Iced Earth, Melechesh, and Vital Remains. His many side projects include Memorial, Serpent Seduced Eye, Redscream. Santolla most recently formed a supergroup — Devil’s Highway — with members of Testament, Crowbar and Dimmu Borgir. The group was working on new music that was nearing completion. Santolla-Rocha wrote that the works would be completed posthumously.

“It will be done and that is Ralph’s legacy,” she wrote.