In coming up with a title in my first post in almost two years, I was inspired by the tee shirt that wrestler Seth Rollins wore which read Redesign, Rebuild, Reclaim. Feeling fairly confident that the shirt was also probably inspired by CKY’s 2002 release, I felt a need to go ahead and revisit the album.
Revisit
Re-listen
Rewrite
So many R’s dude.
Riff-driven and genre mashing where it’s kinda punk, kinda alt-rock, kinda everything, Infiltrate Destroy Rebuild picked up where their 1999 debut Volume 1 left off. A sound suited to clash against the prevailing sound of nu-metal and glistening shiny pop acts at the time, CKY found its groove in the realm of skateboarding videos, with the band’s relationship with blossoming MTV star Bam Margera (to those unaware, Bam’s brother Jess is CKY’s drummer). The band grew into prominence during the VHS tape heydays of skateboard and prank videos. Me and my friend Matt probably wore out his tape of CKY2K with an absurd amount of watching and rewinding and re-watching. Coinciding with the band’s growth, Bam and the other cohorts of prank videos got swept up by MTV and became stars of a little show call Jackass.
CKY the band was born out of the love of extreme metal and horror movies as the name of the band itself transcribes to Camp Kill Yourself, a nod to the cult classic Sleepaway Camp. As fate would have it, CKY’s frontman Deron Miller would marry the star of the film Felissa Rose years later. These inspirations became the touchstone of the band. Jagged guitars, trepidatious vocals, and songs that played out like mini horror films helped create that signature CKY sound.
IDR kicks off with “Escape From Hellview”, a sequel of sorts to “96 Quite Bitter Beings”, the leadoff track on Volume 1 (it’s also that song you’ve likely heard a 96 million times). Both songs pit the listener in a helpless town filled with a bloodlusting, murderous townsfolk. Like all horror movies, the shred of hope lies in Miller’s delivery of “if it’s the last thing I will do, I will escape from Hellview.” “Attached At The Hip” is a lovely ditty about separating yourself from your conjoined twin to disastrous results. To help accent the macabre, guitarist Chad Ginsburg’s additional synth lines in the distance to really make the songs pop. And it’s not just that song where you can hear unsettling noises in the air. Years later, I am still able to pick out a new sound buried in the layers. It’s quite rewarding.
“Sink Into The Underground” and the lead single “Flesh Into Gear” were omnipresent in videos of kick flips and varials and helped propel the band to some high profile gigs such as opening for Guns ’N Roses on their ill-fated 2002 US tour.
What helped separate CKY from other bands of that era was their engagement on their website. The “Ask CKY” page became a hotbed of activity and provided a glimpse of a band that wasn’t seen before. Through this page, fans were able to learn of Ginsberg’s favorite bands (Clutch, Moistboyz, GG Allin) and Miller’s favorite horror movies, with his favorite being 1974’s Black Christmas. At this time I was finally working a real job with real disposable income and was literally buying everything that was suggested to me. With their openness and honestly, CKY resonated with many and with their relentless touring developed a rabid fanbase.
The years after IDR proved to be unkind to the band. Inner turmoil caused a split between Miller and the rest of the band. I won’t get into specifics, but it isn’t hard to find out the history of the split on the internet. It truly does bum me out. CKY felt like one of the first bands that *I* found and that *I* understood more than anyone else. I spent many summer days riding around in my car with both Volume 1 and IDR in heavy rotation. I even shelled out a considerable amount of money to get my hands on physical copies of Volume 2 (outtakes and unreleased/incomplete songs) and the Disengage The Simulator EP, featuring a picture of a picture of Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose’s haunting face during the film’s memorable plot twist plastered on a CRT TV.
To go back to the theme of “Attached To The Hip”, it felt like a part of me was removed.
Both iterations of the band still exist today with Ginsburg and Margera keeping the CKY flag flying and with Deron Miller fronting his own band, 96 Bitter Beings, a name inspired by CKY’s biggest and most well known song.
So yeah, coming back to this album was a nice treat. It took me back to the exciting days of when people recording skateboard tricks and pranks pulled on parents were a form of counterculture, and where it felt like the lines of fan and musician started to blur. It truly felt like the early stages of a revolution in rock music were developing. CKY truly had a sound of their own and a lot of fans were hoping that it would take over the world. Sadly, with tensions between the two camps as caustic as ever imagined, and with both bands causing a lot of scorched earth along the way, that revolution was not to be. However, if anything, a lyric from the album’s closer “Close Yet Far” offers a bit of bittersweet finality.
Close yet far. Drop me a line and tell me how the hell you are. I think of days when there was something to believe, though I never ever wanted this to be.
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