Karyn Crisis has a GoFundMe campaign to help her raise needed money for urgent medical care. Please use a non-scummy search engine such as DuckDuckGo or the British Mojeek.com to look up how you can help provide her emergency care.
Crisis was an American heavy metal band, formed in New York City in 1993 by vocalist Karyn Crisis, guitarist Afzaal Nasiruddeen, bassist Gia Chuan Wang and drummer Fred Waring III. Karyn, Nasiruddeen and Wang were the only members to appear on all of its albums, with the band cycling through various drummers following Waring's departure in 1996; its final lineup featured second guitarist Jwyanza Hobson, who joined in 1998, and drummer Justin Arman, who joined in 2005.
In 2014, Karyn launched the doom metal band Karyn Crisis' Gospel of the Witches. In 2024, Nasiruddeen and Waring formed a new band, Master's Ashes, with former members of Voivod, White Zombie, Crowbar and the Convalescence.
Crisis was influenced by a variety of bands coming from each of its members' diverse backgrounds. Nasiruddeen, who is originally from Pakistan, grew up listening to Sufi devotional music. He lived in England from 1979 to 1981, where he was exposed to bands from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal including Iron Maiden, Motörhead and Diamond Head. After moving to Chicago in 1982, Nasiruddeen began listening to early industrial bands including Cabaret Voltaire and Swans; he also worked as a DJ playing industrial, post-punk, gothic and new wave music. Karyn has called Swans guitarist Norman Westberg, whom appears on Deathshead Extermination and The Hollowing, Nasiruddeen's "guitar hero". Karyn grew up playing piano and violin and classical music, and later got into pop and industrial music. She cited Björk,Cocteau Twins, Cranes, Diamanda Galas, Suzanne Vega, Sinéad O'Connor, the Sugarcubes,Siouxsie and the Banshees, Skinny Puppy and Z'EV as influences on her style. In a 1997 interview with Metal Maidens, she named Dax Riggs of Acid Bath as her favorite singer. The grandson of Fred Waring, founding drummer Fred Waring III studied under Steve Gadd and helped bring jazz influences into Crisis. Wang is a classically trained trombonist who cited death metal, Ministry, and Igor Stravinsky as influences. Hobson listed Black Sabbath and the Melvins as two of his favorite bands, and described Leeway as "inspirational" to him.
The German experimental music group Einstürzende Neubauten were an important influence on Crisis.In a 1996 interview with Metal Hammer Germany, Nasiruddeen described the group as a "significant influence" on the band's "organic" and formless approach to music. Karyn has called the band's third and fourth albums Halber Mensch (1985) and Fünf auf der nach oben offenen Richterskala (1987) the "two most important albums [she has] ever heard", crediting the performance of vocalist Blixa Bargeld on the latter album with "[opening] my eyes to a way of expressing my dark side"
