Pete Koller: Sick Of It All Frontman Lou Koller Lost 70 Pounds While Fighting Cancer

Cancer is a motherfucker. That’s probably the understatement of the century, but seeing your loved ones go through the hardship and physical strain that comes from a cancer diagnosis has to be one of the hardest things to experience. During a recent interview with The Brooklyn Blast Furnace podcast (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), Sick Of It All guitarist Pete Koller provided an update on his brother and Sick Of It All vocalist Lou Koller‘s ongoing cancer battle, and it sounds like it’s definitely taken a toll.

You may recall that a few days ago Lou Koller posted a video message letting fans know that he was effectively in a “stalemate” with the esophageal cancer he was diagnosed with back in June 2024. Things have been a rollercoaster of recovery and sickness for Lou, who at one point said he was “cancer free”, only for it to rear its ugly head once again a few months later. So now with things kind of at a stand still, Pete described how Lou has been living these days.

“I went up to see [Lou] a few weeks ago up in [New] Jersey. He’s staying at my brother Matt’s house. And Matt and his wife Connie are like saints… Matt retired early so he could live life. But now he’s taking care of Lou. He’s gotta be there. He’s there 24 hours a day. So Lou actually has a feeding tube because… So when the cancer came back, he had two more tumors that were pushing his esophagus folds so the food wouldn’t go in. And these tumors are on the sack of the stomach, so they can’t operate on it. So everything has to be done by chemo. Also, he has a tumor, and I think it’s on the sack of his stomach just before the intestines. So they can’t operate on that either. It sucks.

“So everything depends on the chemo treatment. So he had to put the feeding tube in, because he couldn’t really eat. So Matt and Connie had to change the feeding bag, like, every 12 hours or whatever the fuck, and they have to also inject water into him, ’cause it’s hard for him to drink. And he doesn’t drink enough. That’s not good. That’s on him. Someone’s gotta rough that guy up. So he needs to drink more and all that.

“So where he is now, he did two chemo treatments so far. The tumors stopped growing, which is great news. But they haven’t shrunk, so he has to keep going, and I think he has to do four to six more treatments. And they’re brutal — absolutely brutal. The treatment, while he is there, I think it takes four to five hours, and then he has to leave. He has a port in him, and that’s, like, a chemo drip for, like, 24 to 48 hours more chemo. So, after all this is done, he’s completely fucked up — wrecked. But the last time he did it was just a few days ago, and usually I’ll text him, like, ‘Hey, how’re you feeling?’ I know he’s not gonna write me back for two days. He immediately wrote me back. He goes, ‘Yeah, I feel sick, but I feel pretty good.’ More good news.”

Man, that does not sound like an easy existence for Lou, at all. Pete went on to say that the “enzymes in [Lou’s] liver were really high” and that prompted a list of tests were needed to determine what was going on there. At this time, they think that was just a reaction from the chemo, but they’re so far working with Lou to try to get him to have an easier time eating.

According to Pete, the reason they even found out the cancer had returned was the fact that he had not been gaining weight at all, despite supposedly being cancer free.

“I don’t know if you guys knew this, but before all this happened, Lou weighed, like, 190 [pounds]. After the first round of all this, when they said he was cancer free, he weighed 140. [He’s] six [feet], one [inches tall], I think. So then he’s cancer free, but he’s not gaining weight, he’s feeling shittier. And you didn’t see him online, you didn’t see him like this. And then he went to the doctor, and the doctors were so alarmed, the way he looked. They were, like, ‘What the fuck are you doing? You should have called. You should have said something.’ And he was, like, ‘Well, I told you this and this,’ [and they said], ‘But you didn’t tell us this.’ So Lou weighed 119 pounds. So, as soon as they saw him, they’re, like, ‘Yo, you gotta get tested.’ And they took them right then and there to do all these tests, and that’s when they found the three tumors.

“Usually when you’re with this cancer, and you’re indeed cancer free, you have, like, five years of, like, you go back, you check. There’s nothing going on. You go back. This was three months later and three tumors came back. So they’re, like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ So they had to redo all this stuff. So that’s why they had to put the feeding tube in and water tube and all that.”

To help with Lou’s ongoing cancer battle, Jimmy Ferrari from Blast Furnace Productions is teaming up with Heavy Healing films’ Howie Abrams to put on a benefit concert to raise funds for Lou’s Sweet Relief fund. The ‘Benefit for Lou Koller’ concert will take place on February 1 at Lucky 13 Saloon in Brooklyn. And though the tickets all sold out online, there will be 50 available at the door on the day of the show at a first come, first served basis.

We at MetalSucks want to wish Lou Koller a speedy recovery and we’re pulling for him to kick this cancer right in the dick.