"One guy brought his mom’s ashes in an envelope and asked me to help him spread them after the show." Mortuary science, late night chats with Lemmy and a Butcher Babies exit led Carla Harvey to realise her true calling with The Violent Hour

The Violent Hour posing against a white background
(Image credit: Press)

Before she started attracting fans as a roaring metal vocalist in Butcher Babies, Carla Harvey was connecting with mourning families as a mortuary assistant. It’s an undertaking she was almost as passionate about as being onstage, and one that gave her a greater appreciation of life.

“It made me realise how little time we all have and how important it is to grieve,” she says. “Even after I quit my job at the mortuary, fans at meet and greets would ask me for advice on grief. One guy brought his mom’s ashes in an envelope and asked me to help him spread them after the show and say some nice words.”

In 2016, having earned a bachelor’s degree from Cypress College Mortuary School, Carla founded Good Grief Los Angeles, a grief coaching company that helps mourners accept and cope with loss. She is currently the Partner Success Manager and Grief Specialist for Parting Stone, a business that turns cremated remains from a person or pet into 40 to 80 stones to carry as a talisman or be left somewhere to memorialise a loved one.

For years, Carla deftly navigated counselling mourners with being in a metal band. But in 2024, when the demands from Butcher Babies became too great, she acrimoniously left the band.

“For many years, I felt like I was being pushed out because we were touring 10 months out of the year,” she reveals from the back lounge of the Pantera tour bus, sitting next to her fiancée Charlie Benante, the Svengali of her new group The Violent Hour. “The other two owners of Butcher Babies, [vocalist Heidi Shepherd and guitarist Henry Flury] are a couple, so it was fine for them to be gone all the time. But for me, the band stopped being fun, and we no longer shared the same vision anymore. I mean, year after year of touring relentlessly and not bringing home enough money to even pay rent is hard.”

After performing on five albums and touring the world, Carla was Butcher-free, which, in some ways, was liberating. At the same time, she felt manipulated and disarmed. To compensate, she ramped up her death industry efforts and returned to school to earn a master’s degree in thanatology (the study of death and treatment for the terminally ill and their families). Even so, she became depressed and questioned if her days as a frontwoman were over. That’s when Charlie stepped in.

“She seemed a little lost,” Charlie explains. “She was like, ‘What do I do now?’ And I said, ‘Well, here’s what you’re going to do now. You're going to start something new, and we're going to write these songs, and let's see what comes out.’ And that's exactly what happened.”

The Violent Hour - Hell Or Hollywood (feat. Zakk Wylde) ft. Zakk Wylde - YouTube The Violent Hour - Hell Or Hollywood (feat. Zakk Wylde) ft. Zakk Wylde - YouTube
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The collaboration yielded a five-song EP, The Violent Hour, a snarling, melodic pastiche of Sunset Strip raunch n’ roll, New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, and confessional, whisky-burned classic rock. Charlie wrote all the music and recorded guitars, bass, and drums, and Carla tackled the vocals and lyrics.

The first track they worked on was Sex And Cigarettes, a bluesy metal song Charlie wrote 15 years ago that sounds like a cross between KISS and Thin Lizzy. It’s one of two glam-banging fist-raisers – the other being Hell Or Hollywood. Both brought Carla back to the days when she moved from Detroit, Michigan to LA, and was living on the edge and chasing a dream.

“When you’re a kid from the Midwest, the idea of being in the middle of a wild scene is completely seductive,” she says. “When I was 11, I heard Welcome To The Jungle and every hair on my head stood on end. So it was incredibly intoxicating to be in the heart of it all. When I was in mortuary school, I went from partying all night on the Sunset Strip to getting up and being in embalming 101 lab at eight o'clock in the morning, and then having my chemistry classes in anatomy and physiology. It probably saved my life going to school for mortuary science because I had to learn to become responsible.”

At first, being responsible didn’t mean getting sober. There were long nights at the Rainbow Bar and Grill (where The Violent Hour shot the Hell Or Hollywood video), chatting with Lemmy and hanging out with Slash. Once, Carla drunkenly threw a glass bottle and was evicted.

“I have great memories of that stuff, but I'm a completely different person now,” she says. “There were lots of drugs and rock and roll, and it was great for a while. But it wasn’t maintainable. People around me were partying so hard, and suddenly they weren’t creating anymore and their art was literally dying on the vine. So, I straightened out my life pretty quickly.”

The heaviest track on The Violent Hour, The Sick Ones, features a double-bass beat reminiscent of Motörhead, incisive guitar riffing, and vengeful vocals about toxic relationships.

“I’ve been waiting to use the line ‘Cut the sick ones loose’ ever since I scrawled it in a journal in 1997,” Carla says. “I’m an empath, and even with my career in death care, it’s very clear that I like to make things easy for everyone else around me, so I have a history of allowing myself to be uncomfortable. Some people take advantage of that. I learned that you’ve gotta distance yourself from anyone who doesn’t want the best for you or is unbearable to be around.”

The Violent Hour - Sick Ones ft. John5 - YouTube The Violent Hour - Sick Ones ft. John5 - YouTube
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Carla and Charlie met in 2014 when Anthrax and Butcher Babies both played Knotfest, and a year later they began a five-year long-distance relationship. In 2020, Carla moved in with Charlie and during the Covid lockdown the couple collaborated on a few covers for live videos, including Tom Petty’s Yer So Bad and Massive Attack’s Teardrop.

“Those two songs couldn’t be further away from each other,” Charlie says. “And she did such a great job with them, so I knew she could sing anything. So, I knew there would be no boundaries with this new band.”

Currently, Carla and Charlie are auditioning musicians to tour with The Violent Hour. “This is her thing,” Charlie says. “I’m on the other side of it, but we’re putting together a kick-ass all-female band. I look at it as the new Runaways. It’ll be five girls that go out and cause trouble and play fuckin’ loud music.”

Now that The Violent Hour is out, Charlie and Carla plan to finish their second EP, which will feature a guest appearance by Pantera bassist Rex Brown. Charlie says the EP will be just as eclectic as the debut and “a little bit heavier.”

For him, the band is a fun, creative outlet that doesn’t require showing up for rehearsal or performing onstage. For Carla, The Violent Hour is much more, a personal and musical rebirth that has helped her heal the scars from Butcher Babies and develop more confidence in her singing abilities.

“I’m finally able to let go and be at one with the music again,” she says. “I've been waiting for that moment for a long time.”

The Violent Hour EP is out now

Jon Wiederhorn

Jon Wiederhorn is a veteran author, music journalist and host of the Backstaged: The Devil in Metal podcast. He is the co-author of the books Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy From Anthrax, Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen, My Riot: Agnostic Front, Grit, Guts & Glory, and author of Raising Hell: Backstage Tales From the Lives of Metal Legends. He has worked on staff at Rolling Stone, MTV, VH1, Guitar Magazine, Guitar.com, Musician.com and Musicplayer.com, while his writing has appeared in TV Guide, Blender, SPIN, Classic Rock, Revolver, Metal Hammer, Stuff, Inked, Loudwire and Melody Maker.

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