hard rock

CKY

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Pennsylvania hard rock band bound up with the skate-video world that broke them — sludgy riffs, deadpan menace and '96 Quite Bitter Beings' still doing the heavy lifting.

CKY took shape in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1998. Singer-guitarist Deron Miller and drummer Jess Margera had known each other since high school in 1992 and played together in earlier bands before meeting Chad I Ginsburg, then working as an audio engineer, during sessions for what became CKY's debut. The name comes from Camp Kill Yourself, the skate and stunt video series made by Jess's brother Bam Margera, and the band's songs were used heavily in those tapes and the film and TV work that followed.

Their sound leans on downtuned, mid-paced riffs and thick grooves, with Ginsburg's layered guitar work and a flat, sardonic vocal delivery from Miller. The debut took roughly two years to finish, much of it funded by Miller's father, and drew its early exposure entirely from Bam Margera's videos before reaching a wider audience.

Volume 1 arrived in 1999. After signing to Island Def Jam, CKY released Infiltrate•Destroy•Rebuild in 2002, which reached the upper half of the Billboard 200, followed by An Answer Can Be Found in 2005, a US top 40 record. Carver City, made with bassist Matt Deis, came out on Roadrunner Records.

Miller left the band in late 2011 after years of internal tension. CKY carried on with stand-in frontman Daniel Davies for live shows before Ginsburg took over lead vocals for 2017's The Phoenix. Deis returned and departed a second time in 2019, after which Ginsburg and Margera worked through a run of touring bassists and briefly performed as a two-piece.

Since 2022 the band has been touring with bassist Ronnie Elvis James, previously a member of Ginsburg's solo band, while working on a sixth studio album.

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hard rock