The Milwaukee music scene is a lesser place with the passing of William “Will” Bush. Along with his younger brother Kevin, Will performed in the impossibly cool synth-wave project Immortal Girlfriend. As a solo artist, Will released music as Black Challenger. Will passed away December 24 following a battle with cancer. He was 39.
“Music was the heartbeat of Will’s life,” reads his obituary. “Raised in a family where melodies flowed freely, he first picked up the guitar and later mastered the keyboard—each note a reflection of his soul.”
Immortal Girlfriend was a constant presence on Milwaukee stages and airwaves ever since the release of the duo’s Daybreak EP in 2017. The “Dark Knights of Synth” delivered a moody and cinematic blend of electronic music that alternated between dreamy retro-future soundscapes and industrial-serrated bangers. Immortal Girlfriend was a constant presence in the digital pages of Milwaukee Record, too. Between 2017 and 2024, hardly a year went by without an Immortal Girlfriend record, song, or video appearing in our best-of lists.
As Black Challenger, Will took his love of electronic music to an even moodier place. “Go figure that one of our favorite Milwaukee records of 2020 sounds like the end of the world,” we said of 2020’s Vigilance. “William Bush took some time away from his main gig in the excellent Milwaukee electro project Immortal Girlfriend (a group he co-fronts with his brother Kevin) to craft his own collection of sleek, dark, and ominous instrumentals under the moniker Black Challenger. Fans of John Carpenter, Stranger Things, and the retro-future apocalypse take note.”
In 2021, the brothers Bush even launched their own cooking show, No Leftovers.
Will was first diagnosed with colon cancer in 2018. After years in recovery, complications arose. “I guess 2018 was back when I had cancer,” he told Radio Milwaukee in March of this year. “So I’m coming off of that, and there’s just been a bunch of complications with that and a lot of stuff that’s landed me in the hospital recently. So I’m just going to have to have some surgery done to be able to not only correct it, but just also be in the clear for the future.”
The surgery put a hold on a planned Immortal Girlfriend tour. More complications arose following Will’s surgery. “This is literally the fight of my life right now,” he said in a video from November 3.
On December 24, Kevin posted a message on social media: “It grieves me to write this but this morning Will passed on to be with the Creator. He’s been battling cancer for a few years now. He was surrounded by family.”
In a 2020 episode of our My First Band podcast, Will discussed Immortal Girlfriend’s approach to playing live shows: “Whenever we play a show […] we always have the mindset of ‘play every show like it’s your last show, play every show as if this is our last chance we’re going to get to go up on stage and perform.’ We always try to keep that in mind. At the end of the day, it’s a privilege to be able to do it, and to be able to do it in front of people.”
It goes without saying that the privilege was all ours.
RELATED ARTICLES
• My First Band: William Bush (Immortal Girlfriend, Black Challenger)
• Get in the ring and watch Immortal Girlfriend’s “Calling” music video
• New Immortal Girlfriend video doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop
• Immortal Girlfriend goes industrial with “post-synthwave headbanger,” “Others”
• Valerie Lighthart joins forces with Immortal Girlfriend on “I’ll Be Damned”
• Immortal Girlfriend and Lorde Fredd33 channel ‘Black Panther’ on infectious “Midnight”