Chad Gilbert Put a Hardcore Heart Inside Every New Found Glory Chorus
Chad Gilbert, the founding lead guitarist of New Found Glory, died on Sunday, September 20, at 45. He had been living with cancer since 2021. The band's statement said he "left this world surrounded by friends and family and took his final breaths with his wife and mother by his side, just as he wished."
It also said the thing fans already knew: "Chad's guitar playing, songwriting, humor, and relentless drive helped shape New Found Glory for nearly three decades." And it added that for all of it, his favorite accomplishment was being a husband and father. He leaves his wife, Lisa Cimorelli, and their daughter, Lily.
The kid from Coral Springs
Gilbert was born in Coral Springs, Florida, on March 9, 1981, and New Found Glory formed there in 1997, when he was sixteen. From 1995 to 1998, as a teenager, he was also the vocalist of the Florida hardcore band Shai Hulud, and hardcore never really left his playing. He later sang lead in the side project International Superheroes of Hardcore.
That is the secret of New Found Glory. The songs are sweet, the choruses are huge, and underneath them the guitars hit like a hardcore band that learned to love melody. AllMusic credits the band with serving, alongside Blink-182, as "the blueprint to the entire genre for the early 2000s." Gilbert's guitar is a big part of why.
He also shaped other people's records. He produced H2O's Nothing to Prove and three albums by A Day to Remember: Homesick, What Separates Me From You and Common Courtesy.
Where to start: Sticks and Stones
If you are going to play one New Found Glory album this week, make it Sticks and Stones. It came out on June 11, 2002, and it is the band at full height: "My Friends Over You" and "Head on Collision" as the singles, Neal Avron behind the desk, and "Singled Out", where Gilbert screams the way he did in his Shai Hulud days. That one track is the whole Chad Gilbert story in three minutes, the hardcore kid inside the pop punk band. It reached number four in the US and eventually went platinum, but the numbers matter less than the sound.
Then go around it
After that, walk the catalog in this order.
- Catalyst (2004) is the bigger, glossier follow-up, home to "All Downhill From Here" and the band's highest chart peak.
- New Found Glory (2000) is the breakthrough, with the single "Hit or Miss."
- Coming Home (2006) is the slower, warmer, mid-tempo turn, led by "It's Not Your Fault."
- Nothing Gold Can Stay (1999) is the raw debut, for when you want to hear where it started.
The last record
Save Listen Up! for last. It came out on February 20, 2026, recorded at The Castle in Franklin, Tennessee, while Gilbert was going through chemotherapy. He co-wrote the lyrics with singer Jordan Pundik, and when he needed to rest, touring guitarist Dan O'Connor doubled his guitar parts. Gilbert described that period to Kerrang!: "I'm going through a nightmare. But even in that nightmare, there are lessons you can learn and there's joy you can bring people. I don't take that pain and waste it. I take it and turn it into joy."
Hear it as the sound of a guitarist who kept turning up to play, because that is what it is. Dashboard Confessional put it best: "I've never seen anyone carry themselves through something like this with such positivity and strength. What an example to us all."
Start with Sticks and Stones this week, and turn it up for "Singled Out." Then finish where he did.
