Earlier than she began attracting followers as a roaring steel vocalist in Butcher Infants, Carla Harvey was connecting with mourning households as a mortuary assistant. It’s an endeavor she was virtually as enthusiastic about as being onstage, and one which gave her a higher appreciation of life.
“It made me realise how little time all of us have and the way necessary it’s to grieve,” she says. “Even after I stop my job on the mortuary, followers at meet and greets would ask me for recommendation on grief. One man introduced his mother’s ashes in an envelope and requested me to assist him unfold them after the present and say some good phrases.”
In 2016, having earned a bachelor’s diploma from Cypress School Mortuary Faculty, Carla based Good Grief Los Angeles, a grief teaching firm that helps mourners settle for and deal with loss. She is at present the Associate Success Supervisor and Grief Specialist for Parting Stone, a enterprise that turns cremated stays from an individual or pet into 40 to 80 stones to hold as a talisman or be left someplace to memorialise a cherished one.
For years, Carla deftly navigated counselling mourners with being in a steel band. However in 2024, when the calls for from Butcher Infants turned too nice, she acrimoniously left the band.
“For a few years, I felt like I used to be being pushed out as a result of we had been touring 10 months out of the yr,” she reveals from the again lounge of the Pantera tour bus, sitting subsequent to her fiancée Charlie Benante, the Svengali of her new group The Violent Hour. “The opposite two house owners of Butcher Infants, [vocalist Heidi Shepherd and guitarist Henry Flury] are a pair, so it was fantastic for them to be gone on a regular basis. However for me, the band stopped being enjoyable, and we now not shared the identical imaginative and prescient anymore. I imply, yr after yr of touring relentlessly and never bringing dwelling sufficient cash to even pay lease is difficult.”
After acting on 5 albums and touring the world, Carla was Butcher-free, which, in some methods, was liberating. On the similar time, she felt manipulated and disarmed. To compensate, she ramped up her dying business efforts and returned to highschool to earn a grasp’s diploma in thanatology (the research of dying and therapy for the terminally sick and their households). Even so, she turned depressed and questioned if her days as a frontwoman had been over. That’s when Charlie stepped in.
“She appeared slightly misplaced,” Charlie explains. “She was like, ‘What do I do now?’ And I mentioned, ‘Properly, right here’s what you’re going to do now. You are going to begin one thing new, and we will write these songs, and let’s examine what comes out.’ And that is precisely what occurred.”
The collaboration yielded a five-song EP, The Violent Hour, a snarling, melodic pastiche of Sundown Strip raunch n’ roll, New Wave Of British Heavy Steel, and confessional, whisky-burned traditional rock. Charlie wrote all of the music and recorded guitars, bass, and drums, and Carla tackled the vocals and lyrics.
The primary observe they labored on was Intercourse And Cigarettes, a bluesy steel tune Charlie wrote 15 years in the past that feels like a cross between KISS and Skinny Lizzy. It’s one in every of two glam-banging fist-raisers – the opposite being Hell Or Hollywood. Each introduced Carla again to the times when she moved from Detroit, Michigan to LA, and was dwelling on the sting and chasing a dream.
“Whenever you’re a child from the Midwest, the concept of being in the course of a wild scene is totally seductive,” she says. “Once I was 11, I heard Welcome To The Jungle and each hair on my head stood on finish. So it was extremely intoxicating to be within the coronary heart of all of it. Once I was in mortuary faculty, I went from partying all evening on the Sundown Strip to getting up and being in embalming 101 lab at eight o’clock within the morning, after which having my chemistry courses in anatomy and physiology. It most likely saved my life going to highschool for mortuary science as a result of I needed to be taught to change into accountable.”
At first, being accountable didn’t imply getting sober. There have been lengthy nights on the Rainbow Bar and Grill (the place The Violent Hour shot the Hell Or Hollywood video), chatting with Lemmy and hanging out with Slash. As soon as, Carla drunkenly threw a glass bottle and was evicted.
“I’ve nice recollections of that stuff, however I am a very totally different particular person now,” she says. “There have been a number of medicine and rock and roll, and it was nice for some time. Nevertheless it wasn’t maintainable. Individuals round me had been partying so arduous, and abruptly they weren’t creating anymore and their artwork was actually dying on the vine. So, I straightened out my life fairly shortly.”
The heaviest observe on The Violent Hour, The Sick Ones, incorporates a double-bass beat harking back to Motörhead, incisive guitar riffing, and vengeful vocals about poisonous relationships.
“I’ve been ready to make use of the road ‘Lower the sick ones free’ ever since I scrawled it in a journal in 1997,” Carla says. “I’m an empath, and even with my profession in dying care, it’s very clear that I wish to make issues straightforward for everybody else round me, so I’ve a historical past of permitting myself to be uncomfortable. Some individuals reap the benefits of that. I realized that you just’ve gotta distance your self from anybody who doesn’t need the most effective for you or is insufferable to be round.”
Carla and Charlie met in 2014 when Anthrax and Butcher Infants each performed Knotfest, and a yr later they started a five-year long-distance relationship. In 2020, Carla moved in with Charlie and throughout the Covid lockdown the couple collaborated on a couple of covers for stay movies, together with Tom Petty’s Yer So Unhealthy and Huge Assault’s Teardrop.
“These two songs couldn’t be additional away from one another,” Charlie says. “And he or she did such an incredible job with them, so I knew she might sing something. So, I knew there can be no boundaries with this new band.”
At the moment, Carla and Charlie are auditioning musicians to tour with The Violent Hour. “That is her factor,” Charlie says. “I’m on the opposite facet of it, however we’re placing collectively a kick-ass all-female band. I have a look at it as the brand new Runaways. It’ll be 5 ladies that exit and trigger hassle and play fuckin’ loud music.”
Now that The Violent Hour is out, Charlie and Carla plan to complete their second EP, which can characteristic a visitor look by Pantera bassist Rex Brown. Charlie says the EP can be simply as eclectic because the debut and “slightly bit heavier.”
For him, the band is a enjoyable, inventive outlet that doesn’t require displaying up for rehearsal or performing onstage. For Carla, The Violent Hour is far more, a private and musical rebirth that has helped her heal the scars from Butcher Infants and develop extra confidence in her singing talents.
“I’m lastly capable of let go and be at one with the music once more,” she says. “I have been ready for that second for a very long time.”
The Violent Hour EP is out now
