Official messsage from the Record label SPV :

Dear business partners and friends of RIOT,

The unfortunate news spread really fast over the past few hours, whilst the band members are on board of the 70,000 Tons of Metal Cruise with only limited Email / Web access.
And with the different time zone, we just realised what happened literally in the past hours.

Hence only a very quick notification for now on to confirm the sad news officially:

To friends and fans of Mark Reale and Riot,
We are deeply saddened to confirm that Mark has lost his battle with a lifelong illness.
Your thoughts and prayers are appreciated by Mark’s family, friends, and bandmates at this difficult time.

We will follow up by a proper PR statement during the day.

Thank you for your support.

Kind regards
 
SPV GmbH