Biography:

Karim George Chmielinski (October 9, 1965 — December 21, 2024), known professionally as Casey Chaos, was an American musician, best known as the lead singer of Amen. His music encompasses a number of styles, including hardcore punk, death rock, and nu metal.

Early life

Karim Chmielinski was born in Trenton, New York on October 9, 1965.[1][2][3] When he was seven, his parents separated and Casey moved with his mother to Melbourne, Florida. By age 10 Casey was touring professionally as a skater.

Career

1982–1990: Disorderly Conduct

In 1982, fellow skateboarder Duane Peters played him a tape by the band Black Flag. Chmielinski became enough of a fan that he started corresponding with Henry Rollins and his friend, Ian MacKaye.[3][4] After seeing Black Flag for the first time live, Casey’s life was forever changed. He then decided to start his own band. He created Casey and the Skate Punx, and recruited bassist Scot Lade, drummer Bill Erwin, and his childhood friend from New York, guitarist Ken Decter (aka Duke Decter). They later changed the band name to ‘Disorderly Conduct’.

They began writing songs and playing the Florida punk scene. Between his powerful voice and the band’s high-energy presence, they became well-known and popular, with people traveling from as far as Atlanta to catch their shows.[5] Between 1984 and 1986, their songs were included in three punk compilation albums.[6][7][8] In 1986, they independently released the album Amen.[9] That was followed a year later by the six-track EP Atrocity.

1990–2024: Amen

In 1990, Chaos and Decter moved to Los Angeles, changed their band name to ‘Amen’. Chaos met Rikk Agnew, who invited him to sit in as bassist on a concert by his band Christian Death.[10] He then asked Chaos to sing on his new solo album,[11] and play bass on Christian Death’s new album, Iconologia, for which Chaos also wrote or co-wrote three songs.[12]

Chaos then wrote and recorded the album Slave, for which he played all of the instruments.[13] He released it under the Amen name in 1994 and began to put together a new lineup: Paul Fig and Sonny Mayo on guitar, John Fahnestock (aka John Tumor) on bass, and Shannon Larkin on drums.

The band was eventually signed to Roadrunner Records which, in 1999, released a split EP with Misfits,[14] the five-track EP Coma America[15] and their debut album, Amen.[16] To support the album, Amen went on a tour of North America with Slipknot, Machine Head, and Coal Chamber, among others.[17] Amen parted ways with Roadrunner records and they were quickly picked up by This Is An I Am Recording!, the Virgin Records sub-label of producer Ross Robinson and went into the studio to record the album ‘We Have Come For Your Parents‘. In 2001, this album was released and was met with critical acclaim.[18] After the release of ‘We Have Come For Your Parents‘ Roadrunner re-released Amen due to the popularity of the band and press that they were getting.

In March 2002, Chaos announced that Amen had been dropped from Virgin after internal restructuring of their recording division.[19][20] Amen had just recorded 20+ tracks for their new album and Virgin refused to release them. Amen went onto tour whilst they searched for a label to release new material under.

In 2004, Daron Malakian of System of a Down had founded his own label, through Columbia Records, called EatUrMusic Records. Malakian and Chaos had met at the 2002 Big Day Out festival in Australia and had become friends. Chaos put together a new lineup, recruiting bassist Scott Sorry, drummer Luke Johnson, and guitarists Matt Montgomery (aka Piggy D.) and Rich Jones. Amen was the first band Malakian signed and the label released Amen’s Death Before Musick in 2004, along with a video for the single “California’s Bleeding”.[21] The band then embarked on a world tour in promotion of this release.

In 2005 Chaos released a compilation box set. This included previously unreleased Amen and Disorderly Conduct track in addition to remixes of previously released songs. The 4-CD boxed set was a limited edition release of 2,000 copies Pisstory, A Catalogue of Accidents/A Lifetime of Mistakes.[22]

In 2007, Amen were invited to perform on The Henry Rollins Show, a weekly talk show hosted by musician Henry Rollins on IFC. Amen performed three songs, two of which aired live: “Coma America” and “Liberation”, with the third “Another Planet” release in IFC.com. The performance aired internationally on July 13, 2007, on the 14th episode of Season 2. Between the two songs, Chaos made political death threats and it became the first of the show’s episodes to have material cut by IFC, although it ran the full performance on its website. Amen then went on a full tour of Europe including a co-headline slot with Kreator, at the Damnation Festival hosted at the University of Leeds. Amen booked a full European tour.

In 2014, Chaos went back into the studio with Amen to begin recording a new album with Ross Robinson with Dave Lombardo on drums.[23] Due to former commitments the album recording was not completed with Ross Robinson and Amen went on to perform at Knotfest in support of Slipknot.[24] In late 2019 Chaos went back into the studio to continue work on the latest Amen album in the UK before Corona Virus put a hold on the recording.

Credits:

Wikipedia