HELL HATH NO FURY…
An Interview with Psycotic Scum
March 18, 2019
LAKEWOOD, CALIF. – She’s baaack!
So many things were being celebrated at the Regal Inn in Lakewood earlier this month, it was hard to keep track: someone’s birthday, Psycotic Scum’s lead singer Kari back at the mic and a homecoming of sorts for the band. In other words, March 15 was steeped with all kinds of importance.
“It was cool,” Kari said of her return as she sat outside in the bar’s patio following their set. “Of course, I got really nervous at the beginning, but I always get like that even though its been 17 years. Once I’m up there, I’m fine.”
The band’s lead vocalist had stepped away for a brief hiatus to give birth to her second child as the remaining three – drummer Crash, bassist Belan and guitarist Stacia – continued to play as a three-piece. With Kari back, there’s talk now of going farther out for shows within the Southern California region. San Diego, for starters, and then Oregon and Washington at the start of next year.
“We’ve played in all the cities where we’ve lived,” Crash said. “Now it’s time to get out more. Now we’re ready.”
“Seventeen years later we’re finally ready to leave our county pretty much,” Kari said dryly.
“You’ve got to build your fan base,” Crash said smiling.
They certainly have. They shook hands and received compliments after their Lakewood set, but that evening wasn’t an anomaly. The intensity radiating off of them was palpable during an East L.A. gig earlier this year where people were packed in, pushed and practically sharing the stage with them to be engulfed in their music.
Their music’s been characterized as all sorts of things: hardcore punk, thrash, crossover.
“We all have very diverse tastes in music, but it all pretty much stems from punk and thrash,” Crash said.
It’s raw, but there’s a technical expertise there and a depth in the lyrical content – ranging from sex and a high school game they won’t get into called “sock-a-bitch,” to the apocalypse and denouncing pay-to-play venues. The variety is more than likely because it’s not just coming from a single perspective, but several of the band’s members contributing to the lyrical catalogue.
“They’re all different, but they’re derived from an emotion – anger, stress, stuff like that,” Kari said, who has written about everything from the Bubonic plague to Bigfoot. “I have 100 other songs that I just write when I feel something and if we can use them, then we’ll use it. But I have a lot of shit we don’t use. They’re just random songs.”
The output’s born out in a discography of one tape, two demos, a self-titled album, the band’s “Cuntaminated” second album and a third now being worked on, in addition to a demo of material created when they were operating as a three-piece when Kari was gone – all released or to be released on their own, without the help of a label.
“Labels want you to play how they want you to play,” Kari said. “I don’t want anyone else having control over our music. We put it in because we like it and we don’t want anyone else to come in and change what we’re doing. And we can do everything that they’re doing, so why are we going to give them money when we can do the same shit ourselves? We’ve always been DIY.”
It helps to have experience behind you, with the band evolving from simple three-chord punk rock and stories for days, coming up in 2002 when the backyard scenes in Norwalk, La Puente, Santa Fe Springs and other neighboring cities were on fire.
Crash and Kari are the two original members, having grown up on the same street in Lakewood.
The first show they didn’t throw themselves was in a Lakewood backyard, which Kari remembered well. It was a costume party around the time of Halloween and she and Crash played as a two-piece. She was wearing a purple tutu and jumped off the drum set, picking up grass stains as she slid across the lawn.
“We probably sounded horrible and there were 15 people spread out in the back; they weren’t even up close,” Kari said. “That was what? Ninth grade, 8th grade? It was very early and I’m sure we sucked.”
“But it was fun,” Crash said.
Psycotic Scum’s former bassist’s parents were into metal and when that bassist began playing, that’s what got Crash and Kari into starting a band. Crash originally began on guitar with Kari on drums.
“I had no coordination in my fingers and then she didn’t have any rhythm,” Crash said, so they switched.
When their former bass player took off without warning to Texas three days before they were set to play, Kari went in search of a replacement. Belan, at the time, was playing guitar but was suggested to Psycotic Scum.
The two had actually already met, when Kari knocked Belan to the ground during a set.
“She was a drunk patron. She was hanging around the microphone and I tossed her a little bit – a lot a bit,” Kari said of that initial meeting.
“I was trying to grab her mic,” Belan said. “But when I got to your house [to practice], you were like ‘I recognize you.’”
“[Belan] showed up in pajamas and was with her sister, and her sister was all done up like a rocker so I thought her sister was the [replacement] and I thought [Belan] was just a tagalong because she was in sweats and shit,” Kari said. “Not what I expected, but whatever. She’s still here. She stood the test of time. It was meant to be.”
Stacia had a somewhat similar intro to the band. She usually was a spectator during band practices; typically inebriated, but she knew the lyrics to all the songs and one day surprised everyone with that knowledge. So she was asked to come in as lead singer.
“I was like, ‘What the fuck,’ because I’m normally very shy if you couldn’t tell from our performance,” said Stacia, who later learned how to strum and play power chords from Kari.
“Eventually, I started playing one or two songs on guitar and [Kari] was singing, and then it evolved into more her being lead [vocals],” Stacia said.
“I liked playing guitar, but I have a lot more fun doing lead vocals. I’m not stuck in one spot,” Kari said. “I could be free and get as wild as I wanted. It became a true release and I could scream my lungs out and let the stress of the day just be fucking gone. And [Stacia] just evolved as a guitarist and she’s way beyond anything I ever taught her.”
It’s that switching and the allowance of the four to organically evolve into their current positions that’s also provided a strong backbone to Psycotic Scum. Even during their sets, they still swap places on certain songs, proving no one there is a one-trick pony so that, unlike in certain bands, when one person is gone, they’re able to not only function but blow people away with their set.
Interestingly, despite their talent and their longevity in the scene, they’ve largely just kept their heads down, humbly playing show after show locally – because it has been fun, not because anyone was trying to get somewhere. And that’s likely what’s kept the band going all this time: hard work.
“That’s something I’ve thought about,” Crash said when the group is posed with the question of what’s allowed them to endure for so long. “We kind of got stuck in one frame of mind for a long time, just playing backyard shows, playing for locals. It didn’t even occur to us why don’t we tour? Why don’t we put our name out there more? It never occurred to us.”
“I think we were just so busy playing shows out here,” Belan said. “We never really had a period where we just stopped. I mean, of course there were a few times, but not for an extended period.”
It’s certainly not easy to keep up that momentum. They all work. Belan recently finished a master’s program. Stacia is in medical school. Crash is studying to become a certified personal trainer and she, along with Kari, have kids and husbands in their own bands.
In other words, it’s lives outside of what they do onstage, but other responsibilities and challenges have been there from the start, just in different forms.
“When we started, it was male dominated and we did kind of suck, so we got pushed down a lot,” Crash said, pounding a clenched fist into the palm of her other hand. “But we didn’t stop; we never quit.”
They just got better – as is the case with most any band – but because they were women it became all too easy in the earlier days when there was less conversation around gender equality, that the de facto comment from someone ignorant enough to swing it was they sucked because they were girls.
“We have gotten in fights with guys that said ‘Get off stage. Girls don’t belong on stage.’ We’ve literally choke slammed dudes,” Kari said.
She’s referencing a 2012 show in a Los Angeles parking lot. Psycotic Scum’s set kept getting pushed farther and farther back so the band continued drinking.
“We didn’t want to wait [until after the set] and kept drinking,” Crash said, going back over the details of that night. “So we went on and to the left of me I heard a kid behind me when there was a break while we were playing say, ‘See, this is why chicks shouldn’t play music.’ So I got up and I fucking hit him in the face with my sticks. He pushed me to the ground and then [Kari] came out of nowhere and grabbed him by the throat and threw him against the fence. It broke out into a big brawl. But it was well deserved. He deserved that shit. We were drunk, just like when guys play and they get drunk and they suck one night. Wow, sue us, you know? Stupid.”
Other environmental factors that marked the early days of Psycotic Scum was the lack of technology, in the form of social media and apps, now ubiquitous today. There wasn’t Waze or Google Maps to tell help them navigate getting to shows. It was just a flyer and the public transportation system.
“We would skateboard and then take our guitars on the bus,” Kari said.
“We started at a time when there were still flyers and you passed them out and the cops came because they saw the flyer on the fucking pole,” Crash said. “That’s where we started from. So, now, we’re barely learning how to take off with social media.”
“I think for a long time we avoided it because we didn’t want to be with whatever the new kids were into, but now it’s just unavoidable,” Kari said. “If you’re not on social media, then you don’t exist basically – unfortunately. We liked doing that underground thing, but if you don’t keep up with the times, you’re just going to get lost.”
Environments change and evolve, but the long-standing motto for this band has been as long as everyone is still having fun, that’s all that matters.
“We’re purely going at our own pace,” Kari said. “We’re not doing this for anybody else. We’re doing it because we like doing it. We’re not doing it as a career. We’re not doing it because someone’s pushing us to do it.”
Crash leaned forward slightly so as to emphasize her final point, “We’re never going to stop – not until we’re old and brittle.”
The antidote to that Kari noted is, “Then our daughters will take over.”