Embalmer by day, rock star by night: How Carla Harvey bridges death and music in L.A.

Clad successful a sleeveless leather apical that clings similar Saran Wrap, a achromatic loop with metallic metallic eyelets, and shorts that look 2 sizes excessively small, seasoned rocker Carla Harvey wriggles, shimmies, headbangs, and bounces astir the tiny signifier of the Whisky A Go Go successful West Hollywood. It’s her second-ever gig with her caller radical Violent Hour, and backing her are 4 young, likewise dressed musicians.

“You are a stone star, girl!” shouts idiosyncratic successful the audience.

“You’re a stone star,” Harvey shoots backmost successful a breathy whisper, sprouting a wide grin. As Violent Hour motorboat into the acceptable closer, the Motorhead-meets-Guns-N’-Roses barrage of “Sick Ones,” fans bob their heads to the beat. The opus is the fastest, heaviest way connected the band’s eclectic self-titled debut EP, which features euphony styles that soundtracked Harvey’s adolescence, including ’80s metal, hard rock, and alternative. More than anything, Violent Hour marks a rediscovery of joyful vitality aft Harvey’s disfigured divided with her erstwhile metallic band, Butcher Babies, which she co-formed and performed successful for 14 years.

If Harvey’s departure from Butcher Babies marked the decease of a dream, Violent Hour has triggered a resurrection that resounds with symbolism from her chosen careers. Having worked with the dormant and dying astir arsenic agelong arsenic she has been successful bands, the vocalist has discovered a beardown transportation betwixt decease and music. “For me, the 2 animate 1 another,” she says. “Knowing decease is connected the skyline makes maine privation to make creation and music. Having those kinds of things to permission down is the lone mode you tin unrecorded connected aft you’re gone. Thinking of immoderate kid 50 years from present playing thing I’ve recorded is kinda magical.”

Harvey is arsenic knowledgeable astir decease sciences arsenic she is astir metal. Over the past decade, she has been an embalmer, ceremonial director, hospice worker, and end-of-life therapist. She precocious earned her master’s of subject grade successful thanatology (the survey of death), and by time she’s a grief therapist for Parting Stone, a institution that makes rocks retired of cremated remains truthful friends and household members tin support reminders of their loved ones oregon permission them successful places that were important to the deceased.

Violent Hour members L to R: Allie Kay, Kiana De León, Carla Harvey, Jewel Steele and Sasha De León

(Travis Shinn)

Her archetypal vulnerability to decease was astatine property 5 erstwhile she attended her grandfather’s funeral. At the wake, household members tried to soften the stroke for the impressionable young girl. “Granddad’s successful heaven,” said 1 relative. “He’s conscionable sleeping,” said another. Harvey was unconvinced. “When I looked astatine him successful the casket, I was like, ‘Wait a second. He’s gone. He’s dead. He’s not present and determination is nary heaven,’” she recalls connected a Saturday day implicit a Zoom telephone from Galpin Auto Sports Speed Shop successful Van Nuys, wherever Violent Hour volition soon airs for their archetypal promotional photograph shoot. “I knew that everything radical told maine astir decease wasn’t true. I became an atheist connected the spot.”

Early vulnerability to mortality didn’t upset Harvey, it fascinated her. When she saw dormant animals connected the ground, she wondered what killed them. At the section library, she skirted the kids’ conception and went consecutive to the big nonfiction shelves to work astir terminal diseases successful aesculapian textbooks. When she wasn’t studying death, she was reasoning astir it. “Anyone who knew maine from backmost location would astir apt say, ‘Yeah, she was a spot odd,’ says Harvey with a laugh. “If radical wounded me, I would unreal they were dead. I would deliberation of however it happened — whether they had a bosom onslaught successful the beforehand tract oregon died successful a car mishap — and it was a coping mechanics for me. I practically convinced myself that they were truly gone and not successful my beingness anymore. Then, I could determination on.”

Growing up successful Michigan was hard, particularly aft Harvey’s begetter near the household to commencement anew. Harvey and her member were uprooted from their household location successful Detroit and moved to suburban Southfield to unrecorded with their grandmother. The abrupt displacement near Harvey resentful and disenfranchised. Worse, her classmates teased her for being biracial. “Kids would say, ‘What precisely are you?’ and I was truthful ashamed,” she says.

Learning astir decease offered Harvey immoderate flight from her grim reality. So did listening to the radio. When she was 11, the section stone presumption played Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle,” and Harvey had an epiphany. “It was specified a almighty infinitesimal and the feeling I got reverberated done my full body. I didn’t privation that to ever spell away, truthful I started to question it out.”

At 19, she piled everything she owned into a car and drove from Michigan to Los Angeles. She held tribunal connected the Sunset Strip, spent galore agelong nights astatine the Rainbow Bar & Grill, and played successful assorted chartless bands. Before she had immoderate existent occurrence successful music, she traded the jam country for the classroom, enrolling successful a mortuary subject programme astatine Cypress College. “For a while, I lived a accelerated beingness and was not connected a bully path,” she explains. “A batch of radical astir maine who were doing the aforesaid happening were either mislaid oregon dying. That’s the main crushed I enrolled successful mortuary school.”

At school, Harvey applied herself and graduated valedictorian. She worked arsenic an embalmer and hospice therapist and was the manager of a ceremonial home. Thought she discontinue to grounds and circuit with Butcher Babies, Harvey remained connected to the decease industry, and during downtime from the set she worked arsenic a grief therapist and end-of-life counselor.

It mightiness look antithetic for a lively pistillate to beryllium arsenic passionate astir decease studies and music. That’s what Harvey’s husband, Charlie Benante (Anthrax, Pantera), thought erstwhile helium met her successful 2014 connected Ozzfest. “I conjecture I felt similar the mortuary schoolhouse happening was morbid,” helium says from the Chicago location they’ve shared since 2020. “But erstwhile I realized it’s each astir helping radical done grief, it made full consciousness due to the fact that she has truthful overmuch empathy and specified an appreciation for life.”

Carla Harvey

(Travis Shinn)

It was Benante, though, who came to Harvey’s rescue successful 2024 erstwhile she was squeezed retired of Butcher Babies for being incapable to endlessly tour. At first, she was furious. Then, she became depressed. “Grief doesn’t conscionable impact radical who person mislaid a loved one,” says Benante. “Carla was grieving due to the fact that thing that she started had been taken distant from her, and I could archer she was beauteous mislaid astir it. I wanted to assistance get her retired of her funk. She was questioning whether she could adjacent bash euphony again, truthful I thought of a mode to marque definite she could.”

During the pandemic, Benante had worked with Harvey connected covers of songs by Tom Petty and Massive Attack, truthful helium knew she had the chops to sing successful a assortment of styles. He wrote a caller batch of songs successful stone genres they some liked, recorded the guitars, bass, and drums, and past helped Harvey laic down the vocals. The mates recorded 5 songs for the “Violent Hour” EP during the archetypal fractional of 2025. A 2nd EP volition travel adjacent year, arsenic volition much shows.

Though helium was the superior unit successful the conception and improvement of Violent Hour, Benante didn’t privation to play with the set live. Instead, helium and Harvey held auditions and hired 4 young pistillate musicians — guitarist and inheritance vocalist Allie Kay, pb guitarist Kiana De León, bassist Jewel Steele and drummer Sasha De León. Benante compares the set to ’70s pistillate hard stone radical the Runaways, hatched and molded by stone Svengali Kim Fowley, which marked the debuts of Joan Jett and Lita Ford.

With the Violent Hour lineup cemented, Benante tin afloat dedicate himself to Anthrax and Pantera, and Harvey tin give herself arsenic to euphony and decease sciences successful a mode that was intolerable with Butcher Babies. Not that she hasn’t sacrificed oregon gone a small disturbance brainsick on the way.

“Man, arsenic soon arsenic I got disconnected enactment each day, I deed it hard,” she says. “I wrote euphony each nighttime portion we did the EP, and I inactive do. But I get a footwear retired of moving each the time. It’s what I love. I’m precise alert that beingness is abbreviated and that, if you privation to bash something, determination is an urgency there. If you enactment it off, you mightiness beryllium excessively late. You person to bash it now.”