Music / CKY

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CKY is either an Alternative Rock or an Alternative Metal group whose roots date back to 1992. They are known for utilizing unique sounding distortion and heavy rift based songs. The band currently consists of singer/guitarist Chad I. Ginsberg, drummer Jess Margera, and bassist Matt Deis.

Two of its key members met in high school in West Chester, PA: 14 year old Jess Margera (brother of Bam Margera) and 16 year-old Deron Miller. Years later in 1995 they started a science fiction Death Metal band called Foreign Objects, producing an impressive sounding 5 song EP. Eventually they started a more radio friendly project called Oil.

The two began recording new material in January 1997, which would be released months later as their self-titled second EP cassette (referred to as the Gold Tape), limited to 500 copies. Oil continued on through November 1997, when they started recording their first official album (which would later become CKY's Volume 1). It was during these recording sessions where they met engineer / producer Chad Ginsburg. Chad was attracted to Oil's song "Disengage the Simulator," and was asked to join the band as a second guitarist. This addition is the true beginning of CKY.

By 1998, with a concrete writing core of Chad Ginsburg, Jess Margera, Deron Miller, and their live bassist Ryan Bruni, Oil dissolved. Sitting around a pizza place in West Chester, Deron came up with Camp Kill Yourself as the new band name, the new direction, the new movement. No more mainstream and no more pop appeal. Camp Kill Yourself finished writing and recording their first album as a group. The album, titled Volume 1, was released on February 27, 1999. The same day, they released an unofficial compilation album titled Volume 2; the CD contained demos, B Sides, and prank phone calls, serving as a soundtrack album for Jess' brother's first skate video.

That June, preparing to play the 2000 Warped Tour, Chad recruited their fourth live bassist, Vernon Zaborowski, who would be their most concrete bass player to date. During the tour, the band put out their first EP, Disengage the Simulator, which was limited to 2,000 copies. Starting that October, CKY's music appeared on the hit MTV show jackass generating a flood of new fans. The show also featured band members themselves on certain episodes. The band went strong for a good while after that, releasing four studio albums total up to 2009.

Although the band is still going, The New '10s saw nasty inter-band drama that caused a lack of releases for eight years and ultimately resulted in long time frontman Deron Miller quitting and fronting his own version of it^note Actually his other full time band at the time called "Foreign Objects", the Deron fronted band would go by "CKY+Foreign Objects" and then "Mecha CKY" before settling on "96 Bitter Beings" after Deron admitted that having 2 competing bands just hurt both of them. CKY itself now performs as a trio, with Chad now performing vocals. After a short break, in which Chad released a solo album, Rock n Roll Alibis, the band finally released their fifth album in 2017, fittingly titled The Phoenix.

The group is also known for their "Ask CKY" section of their website which features over 10,000 questions from fans answered by the group as well as being very approachable honest people offstage.

The band has examples of the following tropes:

• Alternate Album Cover: CKY's debut was initially a Self-Titled Album released under the name Camp Kill Yourself, with the cover art being a stylized painting depicting the public suicide of politician R. Budd Dwyer — from 2001 onward, the band name was changed to CKY, the album was re-titled Volume 1, and the cover design was changed to a photo of Chad Ginsburg performing live at the Warped Tour.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The titular 96 Quite Bitter Beings are all pure evil to a man.
  And not one supports the cause to leave the blood stay in the veins
• Ambiguously Human: "96 Quite Bitter Beings" leaves it somewhat ambiguous whether the titular 96 are monsters or just a band of violent thugs and murderers - the only things implying they may not be human is the use of the word "beings" to refer to them. The sequel song, "Escape From Hellview", heavily implies that the "beings" are not "living" themselves and are likely vampires, with the line "not one supports the cause to leave the blood stay in the veins" from "96 Quite Bitter Beings" retroactively becoming a hint to their true nature as it becomes obvious the 96 don't just want to spill blood, they want to feast on it.
• Dwindling Party: in "Escape From Hellview", a group of people are lost in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by monsters. The singer finds the corpses of his friends, including some hanging from trees or impaled on barbed-wire fences.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In some early CKY videos, demos of future songs (i.e. "Sporadic Movement," "Flesh Into Gear" ^note  originally titled "Sinking Fast" ) appeared in the background of bits.
  • In the documentary of the making of Haggard, during the final section on Brandon Novak's drug troubles, Deron is shown performing an instrumental on an acoustic guitar... Which was released several years later on An Answer Can Be Found as "Behind the Screams."
• Evil Is Not Well-Lit: Hellview certainly isn't. Justified as the protagonists of "Escape From Hellview" are lost in the woods at night and the fire has just died.
  The air as black as can be, can't even see that my hand is in front of me.
• Genre-Busting: Although their sound can generally be described as Alternative Rock and Alternative Metal, they take in a whole lot of influences and are generally an experimental band.
• Harsh Vocals: Deron sometimes used these, most prominently on "Sniped". It's worth mentioning he has actually has some experience with death metal, with the aforementioned Foreign Objects and later his Melodic Death Metal project World Under Blood, and he is also currently a member of longstanding death metal act Malevolent Creation, with whom he is currently working on his first studio album as their singer. However, he departed Malevolent Creation in 2024 before the record could be finished for unknown reasons, though it's safe to say they were less than amicable as he allegedly cut off all contact with the other members without telling them.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Who would have thought such an upbeat skater song was about getting stuck in a town with 96 bloodthirsty beings?
• Our Vampires Are Different: "Escape From Hellview" all but confirms that the beings referred to in it and its predecessor "96 Quite Bitter Beings" are out for blood in a very literal sense.
• Revisiting the Roots: The Phoenix is basically a deliberate return to their very old sound: it is a follow-up to the band's early sound from Volume 1 and Infiltrate. Destroy. Rebuild, with An Answer Can Be Found and Carver City basically ignored during the writing process.
• Rock Trio: Not originally, but the modern lineup has shifted to this.
• Step Up to the Microphone: Chad picked up lead vocals during the The Phoenix era, as well as for the non-album single "Afterworld".
• Unable to Retreat: The protagonists of "96 Quite Bitter Beings" and later "Escape From Hellview" are trapped there as the only exit from the town has been flooded.
• The Undead: "Escape From Hellview" is about a group of defenseless people trapped in a town that is overrun with undead monsters who "hunger for the living", with their thirst for blood implying they are probably vampires.
  I'm overhearing a whisper, "They won't escape until the blood is set free".
• Wretched Hive: Hellview is a tiny, isolated town where "the rules just don't apply". It is home to only 96 beings who are all indiscriminately hostile to outsiders and are noted to have "deleted all the tourists at the bottom of the lake". According to the later song "Escape From Hellview", they are very likely vampires to boot.