Coal Chamber drummer Mike “Bug” Cox has revealed that he was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer last year, but that he’s now cancer free “after a yearlong battle and absolutely brutal rounds of radiation, chemotherapy, and eventually surgery.”
Cox’s revelation comes ahead of Coal Chamber’s set at Las Vegas’ Sick New World festival this Saturday, April 25th. Along with informing fans of his cancer battle, Cox is raffling off one of his custom Coal Chamber drum sets to benefit the nonprofit organization Fuck Cancer.
The drummer wrote the following about his cancer fight in the description of the online raffle:
“GRATITUDE. It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot, but it hits different for me these days. April 1st 2025, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer. I’m not unique, it feels like a lot of us are dealing with this or know someone who is. It’s dark, it’s scary, and it changes the lives of everyone in its orbit.
The first thing I said to my wife was that I was going to fight with everything I had for my family! There were a lot of days I couldn’t make it out of bed, but I didn’t want cancer to define me. So I finished building a house I was working on and I wrote some of the best music of my life! After a year long battle and absolutely brutal rounds of radiation, chemotherapy and eventually surgery I’m so grateful to be able to say I made it to CANCER FREE.”
