On December 20, 2024, Amen’s iconic frontman, Casey Chaos, passed away at his home in LA, from a massive heart attack. Among the first to find out was Casey’s close friend, drummer Roy Mayorga. He was, he says, “shocked but not shocked”.
Casey had long suffered from poor health, heart problems and a lung disorder that saw him never without an inhaler. But beyond that, he was a man who lived his entire life in the fast lane, driving like he stole it. Like a punk rock Evel Knievel, he’d broken numerous bones, both on and off stage, his arms a maze of scars from self-harm. But for all its brevity, just 59 years, Casey lived an extraordinary life. Chaos by name and chaos by nature.
Born in Trenton, New York, in 1965, Casey moved to Florida as a child. “I hated everybody,” he told Metal Hammer in 2004. “I had no friends, so I started skateboarding.”
Such was his fearlessness, by the age of 10 he was touring as a semi-professional. By 15, he’d made enough money that his parents could buy their home. He also discovered drugs and punk rock, and dived headlong into both, fast becoming friends with legends such as Minor Threat/Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye and Black Flag’s Henry Rollins. There’s even a photo of a teenage Casey down the front at a Black Flag show around 1982. “Black Flag changed my life,” he said.
It was only a matter of time before Casey started his own band, the aptly named Disorderly Conduct, which self-released an album – Amen – and a six-track EP called Atrocity. But Casey hated Florida, and grew increasingly tired of being called “a freak and a faggot”.
“[People would] be like, ‘Go to LA, that’s where all the freaks and homos live!’,” he said. “So that’s what I did.”
Around the same time that Disorderly Conduct became Amen, Casey met Rikk Agnew of Christian Death, who invited him to sing on his 1992 solo album, Turtle, and play bass on Christian Death’s new album, Iconologia, for which Casey also wrote/co-wrote three songs. Meanwhile, Casey was busy recruiting a band of like-minded lunatics for Amen’s live performances, while writing and recording all the music for 1994’s debut album, Slave, himself.
But it was the pair of albums produced by legendary Slipknot/Korn producer Ross Robinson, 1999’s self-titled record and 2000’s We Have Come For Your Parents, that saw Amen suddenly splashed across the covers of UK music magazines.
The former’s lead single, Coma America, was about the aftermath of 9/11, Casey’s lyrical rage becoming increasingly political, while the latter’s The Price Of Reality pushed boundaries with its brutal video, directed by Dean Karr, which depicted everything from schoolkids dancing with axes and guns to fetish gimps and a lot of blood. But Casey Chaos and Amen were never just about music. It was an attitude, the furious spirit of chaos!
“This isn’t a band, it’s a lifestyle!” Casey told Metal Hammer. At one of their first UK shows, at London’s Garage in August 2000, Casey slashed his arms onstage. Following another show at the LA2, he was rushed to hospital after taking a broken bottle to his arm during the set. At 2002’s Reading Festival, he smashed his face against the stage until it bled. Despite Amen’s popularity in the UK, they were never going to be commercially viable, never going to be everyone’s favourite band – but to a select few, they were everything.
“Amen was dangerous!” says Snot bassist John Fahnestock, a former Amen member who played in various line-ups. “Anything could happen at any time, and Casey always brought the unexpected. We always asked everyone, ‘Please don’t stand on the side of the stage when we play, you may get hurt.’ Casey was a fearless force, like a wrecking ball in motion at all times. We played a show in Barcelona where the ceiling was so low, Casey knocked himself out cold. We all stopped playing to see if he was OK, but once Casey came to his senses it was all back to the stage, and we were all back firing on all cylinders in a matter of seconds!”
“I don’t know how he did it, and I watched him do it,” echoes Roy, currently drumming for Jerry Cantrell, via Ministry and many more, and a longtime session player for Amen. “It’s just crazy, some of the shit he did onstage, like diving off a 30-foot PA! I see him jump off the stack and hit the ground, and then seconds later he’s back up jumping around. I would hear that microphone just rock against the stage, like, ‘Crash!’, and the band’s still playing.”
Offstage, Casey’s vision was just as intense. “Creatively, he was such a blast to work with,” says Dean Carr, who directed the video for The Price Of Reality. “He was extremely trusting in ideas I’d put forth, he was genuinely interested in every part of our production, whether still photoshoots or music videos! He loved dropping by the editing and colour grading sessions on our music videos. Casey was always ahead of the pack when it came to his visual arts.”
“There’s a lot of good memories,” agrees Roy, “It was always fun, like the way we used to write together. He would throw references at me, like, “Let’s try and do something like the Germs’ Manimal!” So I would play it with similar drumming to that, and then he would take whatever we recorded away somewhere else, and then make this crazy music over it.”
“Casey’s passion for music and his vision for Amen was relentless and 100% from the heart,” says John. “Offstage, Casey was kind, caring and soft spoken. I never remember him raising his voice or showing anger.”
But while Casey was a gentle soul at heart, he also had a wild side. Having known him for more than 20 years, I know he wouldn’t want me to whitewash his image and pretend he was a saint. Many were the crazy nights we spent together raising hell, like the night diving through VIP tables at The Roxy on Sunset to liven the place up and piss off self-important people.
Or the night in 2012, when he was arrested for driving into 15 parked cars. Once in a while, he’d disappear long enough for friends to worry, but then he’d pop up in Norway with the brilliant hardcore punk/death metal supergroup Scum, or provide guest vocals for This Is Menace and Christian Death. Casey also checked himself into rehab more than once, aware he was living too close to the edge.
Amen’s last record, Death Before Musick, was released in 2004, and they stopped touring three years later. In 2014, they reunited at Knotfest in California, with Roy Mayorga on drums, and performed a new song – Casey was working on another album. However, that would be their final show.
“He just kind of hid away,” says Roy, who has ‘Amen’ tattooed on his forearm. “Just writing music for Amen, and working with different guys like Dave Lombardo and myself. I think that’s where his heart was at the time, but he started getting more health issues with his back, so I think that definitely put a hold on a lot of things.”
Before his death, Casey was working on an unnamed new project with Roy alongside Stig from Amebix, one of his favourite UK punk bands.
“It sounded great,” says Roy. “It’s like Amebix meets Amen, exactly right down the middle. Casey was really into British punk. It’s funny, ’cause I’ve seen that Amen seem to get lumped in with the nu metal thing, and I was like, ‘No, they’re a punk rock band!’ I mean, there’s a lot of great bands in that genre, but Amen were not that! They were in a league of their own!”
Dean and Roy are working to recover and complete Casey’s best unreleased tracks.
“I want to get all his music, the last things he’d written that were supposed to be a new Amen record, and break it down to at least 13 songs, and get different singers or people Casey looked up to,” says Roy.
“I want to get a song with Henry Rollins and [Poison Idea’s] Jerry A and [Black Flag’s] Keith Morris, even [Dead Kennedys’] Jello Biafra, like iconic punk bands. I think that would be great. It’d be a good way to raise some funds for his mom.”
Invited to play live on US chat programme The Henry Rollins Show in 2007, Casey called for the deaths of political leaders, a move that would doubtless have seen Amen dropped by their label, if they hadn’t already been dropped by three majors. That says as much about Casey and Amen as any of their music. In a world of often vapid, say-nothing shit, they were absolutely vital, spewing rage and complete annihilation. And while Casey may have had his demons, he beat the living hell out of them onstage.
“I will always remember my friend for his sense of humour, fearlessness, love of animals, and of course his, ‘I don’t give two fucks’ attitude!” adds Dean. “I am eternally grateful to Casey Chaos for being a guiding force to get my drunk ass into recovery on July 24, 2022! Sadly, I now have his empty chair next to me at our weekly Sunday AA meeting. He is with me forever, and I vow to preserve his legacy.”
There are plans to honour Casey at the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas, alongside the likes of the Germs’ Darby Crash and Dead Boys/The Lords Of The New Church’s Stiv Bators – some of punk rock’s most iconic frontmen, and some of Casey’s heroes. And perhaps years from now, some angry kid will discover Amen and it will change their life.
“I think his legacy is to be more in obscurity,” says Roy. “Which is cool, and I think that’s what you want to be, really. Not totally above ground, not totally underground, somewhere in the middle.”
“Anyone that witnessed Amen and Casey will always know there will never be another frontman like him ever,” concludes John. “He was a legendary punk rock icon.” Rest in chaos.