CRISIS Interview

Crisis have been hammering out thought-provoking extreme metal now for over a decade, providing listeners with some of the most unclassifiable, original music in the metal scene. Frontwoman Karyn Crisis is one of the most engaging personalities out there, accenting the group's off-the-meter musical insanity with vocalizations that are unlike any other singer in metal today, male or female. The band's most recent album for The End Records, "Like Sheep Led To Slaughter" is a great example of what a group of musicians can accomplish when they refuse to obey trends or follow the rules musically. The outspoken singer has the looks and the talent to match, a rare combination for a female metal singer and when employing her highly charismatic skills in a live setting, she has the ability to get a crowd worked up like few can. The illustrious siren shares her thoughts here and you can catch her in action on the The World AbomiNations Tour, which kicked off Monday, October 3rd in Hollywood, CA and is headed across the United States...

The Gauntlet: What exactly happened with drummer Ryan Ball? He had already left the group when the arrest was made, right?

Karyn Crisis: No, he wasn't in the band. He had sent an audition tape and we invited him to come an audition in person and then he was going to come out here to stay and play, but almost as soon as he showed up we found out that he had immigration problems and we were unsure of his immigration status and were trying to get to the bottom of his status with his attorney. He had a situation where his immigration was in status for a while and then we found out it was out of status, he was just dishonest about a lot of things with his situation and we could tell that he had a lot of problems that he didn't want to deal with. We had just gotten offered to go and play Japan and possibly Canadian dates and then we were planning Europe and he couldn't even do those shows. It was just a lot of issues with him where he didn't have his act together as a person so we bought him a ticket and we shipped him out. We didn't want to be responsible for him if things got worse and not long after that we found out that he got arrested and actually, we weren't too surprised with that. You never know, and when you're dealing with someone that you don't know and drummers seem to be a very weird breed that way, they like to hold a lot of things inside, and they come out at inconvenient times, it seems. In our case, anyway.

The Gauntlet: So have you found a replacement?

Karyn Crisis: We're working with this guy Justin, who did the Japaneese show with us and he also played the SXSW show with us. We just put a news blurb up on our site saying that we're starting to write the new record with him and he's going to be touring with us as well, but we're just taking it one step at a time.

The Gauntlet: So what type of an experience was it for the band to play in Japan?

Karyn Crisis: It was amazing. It was something that we had wanted to do for a while and we finally had the ability to do it, because our album was available in Japan. They all were, on our previous label. So it was exciting, we had a great time. There was somewhat of a language barrier, of course. A lot of people told us that they had waited a long time to see us, like seven years. So it was really, really exciting, a really cool time.

The Gauntlet: How did you feel that the SXSW performance went over? Was that an enjoyable thing being that it's mostly industry that attends those shows?

Karyn Crisis: It was great, I really don't like playing things like that, industry festivals, because they're just not like regular shows.

The Gauntlet: Do you feel more pressure with those people there?

Karyn Crisis: Nah, we don't feel like that. Fans are one thing, industry's another, you know? We're not really that worried about the industry. But it was The End Records' first showcase night, when they are showcasing all of their bands. So we hoped that it would go very well and it was a raving success, so we were all surprised. And, it was a fun night on top of that and it was a really good time.

The Gauntlet: How do you feel about the band's relationship with The End? It seems like they are very eclectic about choosing their artists and they seem to be collecting quite a collection of great artists. On the whole, it seems to be growing as a label very quickly.

Karyn Crisis: It is a quick growing label and we like the fact that they are an artist-friendly label. They are all about the artists and the music. We deal with the owner personally there. Everything he has promised us, he has pretty much come through with and you don't see that with many labels. They are growing fast and they are going through some growing pains. We've had a little bit of trouble in terms of distribution, the record is not in as many places as we'd like it to be. But that all comes with growing as a label and things are changing for them very quickly because they are trying to be very competitive, with press and we have our second video on MTV, and commercials, really good tours. So they've gotten to be a label that will be around for a very long time and like you said, their roster's an eclectic group of bands which aren't so easily catagorizable, which is one thing we like.

The Gauntlet: Speaking of not being able to be put into a category, to what do you attribute the uniqueness of Crisis? Your band is obviously a band that is doing something that is completely different from anyone else.

Karyn Crisis: We have a different writing process than a lot of bands�we don't pre-write songs or riffs before we come to the rehearsal space. It's not like "Here, I wrote the song, follow me", we really jam, which is a rock 'n' roll kind of thing to do, I think. We really like to let the song evolve or not through the process of jamming. That's a bit of a challenge because when you write a song, you really have to be able to communicate musically, to see what you're made of. That's a process that we like and it's a process that you have to let go of some of your control with You have to let the music take you where you want to go, and we have a real perfectionist style when it comes to editing. Some of the songs make it through and some of them don't. We really like to take the majority of our music, songwriting-wise and music wise and we like to let it take us on some sort of a journey. So that's why you don't hear the typical metal vocals or the typical metal riffs or the typical metal rhythms that you might hear in a lot of metal bands that might not sound typical, it might sound awesome, but we just take that different writing approach. We don't feel the pressures of having to fit into a certain type of genre. We don't weed our songs out according to that process and say "Will this fit in with what's going on in the metal world?" We don't have that type of writing process or that process about ourselves at all. So in a way, we're like a rock-metal-industrial-hardcore-experimental band in that sense. Our mindset, I would say is very punk rock in that we don't give a fuck about where we're gonna fit in. We don't worry about those things, we just express. So there's a lot of different elements that go into what Crisis is and I guess those are some of the reasons why.

The Gauntlet: Can we expect the band to go through further evolution in the future?

Karyn Crisis: Absoultely, 'cause that's what it's all about. I think with every album, we always maintain this core vibe of what a Crisis song is, the essence of Crisis, but we're always working to better ourselves as musicians and to take our music to a higher level. The same thing will happen with this new album. We want to take the heavier elements of Crisis to an even more brutal texture and we want to take the melodic, haunting side of Crisis to a new level as well You'll see both sides, the light and the darkness explored in a more intense level than previously.

The Gauntlet: Generally, a female vocalist in a metal band will sing with just one or two particular vocal styles, but you seem to have a wide array of vocal personalities. You come at the listener from so many angles. Is this something that you do consciously?

Karyn Crisis: Yeah, that started back before I was in Crisis and I was experimenting on my own, just playing guitar and recording songs and the vocal style was just a lot more instrumental, a lot of experimenting and screaming and growling and just a lot of experimenting with music in general. Once Crisis asked me to join, I had pretty much developed a vocal style which was this experimental, I guess experimenting with both the male and female sides of my voice, both the light and dark sides of my voice. You know, the beautiful, ethereal side of my voice and the rageful sounding side of my voice. So when I became a part of Crisis, I just had to add words to those textures, my textural style had already developed. So, it was a style that had developed naturally and I honed in on it more and I guess as a musician, I can sing growling for a whole song or I can sing melody for a whole song, but that's not enough for me, I don't know why exactly, but I feel like I need to express more, I feel like I need to experiment more. I could make it simple and make it sound like I am bored singing one way, but it's not that I'm just bored, I feel like if you have the muscle to do a lot of things and to take your voice to all sorts of places, why stand still? Why not exercise all of those things that you are able to do?

The Gauntlet: Obviously, you have a fascination with knives�

Karyn Crisis: I do.

The Gauntlet: Why is that?

Karyn Crisis: Well I really like a lot of dark artwork and growing up I was a really angry kid. I was a loner and I wasn't really good at expressing myself and I would create through artwork and sometimes the artwork would be pretty violent, because I think that's a more responsible way of expressing your feelings than going out and beating someome else up. I'm not really sure why I got into knives, but I like the shape, I like the way that they are very primitive. I feel like they really teach you respect for life in a way. If you're gonna go out and kill someone with a gun, you're not really getting involved with that death or that taking of a life or the physicality of the body, but if you're thinking of doing it with a knife, you have to really get in there and get involved with that. That concept of creation and death and things like that. I think that knives have been incorporated into my artwork as my sort of weapon against the world, my phallus in this patriarchy we're dealing with here.