Official have released the official cause of death for late Crazy Town singer Seth “Shifty Shellshock” Brooks Binzer. According to a statement from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office on Tuesday (Sept. 24), Binzer, 49, died as a result of the combined effects of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine. The manner of death was ruled “accidental.”
The Medical Examiner’s office said Binzer was found unresponsive at a Los Angeles-area home on June 24 and after a postmortem probe, his cause of death was certified on Tuesday. The “Butterfly” singer’s passing as a result of an accidental overdose came after years of substance struggles for the rap-rock group’s frontman.
After Binzer’s death, group manager Howie Hubberman said in a statement, “Seth Binzer, after struggling with addiction and Crazy Town’s rapid success with ‘Butterfly’, never was able to reach out on a more successful level to deal with his addictions. We all tried, but ultimately we all failed, or Shifty would still be here.”
Binzer was born on Aug. 23, 1974 and met Crazy Town co-founder Bret “Epic” Mazur in 1992. The pair fleshed the group out with members Adam Goldstein (better known as DJ AM, who died from an accidental overdose in 2009), guitarist Charles “Rust Epique” Lopez (who died in 2004), guitarist Antonio Lorenzo “Trouble” Valli and drummer James “JBJ” Bradley Jr. The band’s Nov. 1999 debut album, The Gift of Game, peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 on the chart dated March 3, 2001, and remained on the tally for 34 weeks.
The LP’s first two singles, “Toxic” and “Darkside,” didn’t chart, but their third effort and best-known track, the uber-catchy “Butterfly,” ran all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts, where it held the top spot for two weeks. The band broke up less than a year after the Nov. 2002 release of follow-up album Darkhorse. With a rotating roster of members Crazy Town reformed several times in the years after, but were never able to regain their early career momentum.
In 2023, Crazy Town were booted from a tour with HedPE after an intra-band brawl between Binzer and co-vocalist/guitarist Bobby Reeves.