The Jakarta Post is reporting that Irvan Sembiring, singer, guitarist and mastermind behind the seminal Jakarta thrash metal band Rotor, who helped form the blueprint for Indonesia’s extreme music scene, died on Tuesday. He was 51.

His family said in a statement that Irvan had come to stay overnight at his family’s home in Cinere, South Jakarta, and was found unresponsive in the morning. He is survived by his wife Indah and his four children.

Irvan’s sudden passing has shocked friends and family, as well as the country’s legion of metalheads, who have long considered him one of the most respected figures in the country’s metal scene.

The Jakarta Post was in contact with Irvan late on Monday during which he spoke of plans to travel to Pakistan on a religious trip. After leaving the music industry in the late 1990s, Irvan spent most of his time studying Islam and, over the past decade, traveling the world preaching to fellow Muslims.

His faith-motivated travel was, in a way, a continuation of his youthful ambition to travel and conquer the world as a thrash metal musician.

In 1993, shortly after opening for Metallica at Lebak Bulus Stadium in South Jakarta, which ended in the biggest riot the country had seen since the Malari student protest in 1974, Irvan packed up his bags and traveled to California with the intention of releasing his brand of speed-driven metal music on an American record label.

Read more at The Jakarta Post.