The American post- hardcore band talk their longevity, upcoming Australian tour and their reunion after lead singer Tyson Steven’s death
“Pouyan [Afkary] used to breathe fire at the start of the show,” Chad Crawford says, without even a pause, when I ask about the band’s early days. It’s one of those sentences that arrives mid-conversation, completely matter of fact, and somehow even more arresting because of that. Pouyan’s already laughing, properly remembering it, eyes gone somewhere else. “We were playing our homecoming dance. I had my jaw wired shut because I’d had an ATV accident. Still breathed fire. Through the wiring.”
One of the school advisors had tried to shut it down which is probably fair, given the fire and all. But her son who was doing sound didn’t. He actually completely ignored her and let them keep playing.
“He betrayed his own mum,” Pouyan says, still laughing whilst recounting the incident. That little act of rebellion now feels like some kind of pivot point. Because those same kids with a dodgy PA system and a reckless sense of showmanship ended up turning into a real band. One that made money. That got out of Gilbert, Arizona. Got record deals and toured around the world.
Right now, Pouyan’s calling from Los Angeles. Chad’s still in Phoenix. They’ve just announced they’re heading back to Australia in November, and they’re visibly fired up about it. “Amped,” Pouyan says. “We’ve been a few times now and it’s one of the places we always want to get back to.”
Although by the sounds of it, Australian crowds are going to have to properly bring it. “The US has been wild lately,” Pouyan says. “We had three crowd-surfing lanes going at one of the shows. There was this one woman, she was blind, and she just kept getting up again and again. She’d use her walking stick to feel the front of the stage, then launch. It was insane.”
“Nothing stops the American crowds,” Chad says. “It was just rambunctious!”
“So yeah,” Pouyan adds, “we better see a blind Australian come out and crowd surf!”
Scary Kids Scaring Kids have been around for twenty-three years now. Which is a ridiculous amount of time for any relationship, let alone one that’s been spent mostly in vans and green rooms. They started the band back in 2002, still at Highland High School. For the first few years they played any venue that would have them — warehouse parties, dive bars, someone’s mate’s cousin’s garage, whatever.
A lot of these early shows were bad. Pouyan even called them “shamelessly awful.” But unperturbed by the small crowds and sticking stages, they didn’t stop. They later put out a self-financed EP called After Dark in 2003. After graduating, they subsequently went on their first proper tour. Thereafter they got signed to Immortal Records. Then in 2005, they released The City Sleeps in Flames.
Chad still sounds surprised by the whole thing. “It’s honestly crazy that we’re still doing it,” he says. “Like we get to hang out with our best friends and play shows all over the world. That’s not normal.”
Even more surprising: they’ve never had a proper fight. Like not one. I ask if that’s true and Pouyan doesn’t even hesitate in responding. “Yeah. The whole reason we’re doing this is because we actually like being around each other. When I joined the band, I couldn’t even play an instrument. Chad tried to teach me a few, but it didn’t work. I ended up teaching myself piano later on and came back. The whole point of this band was just wanting to be around each other.”
He pauses. “Wait that sounded cheesy as hell.”
But it’s actually not. In Pouyans case, this sentence feels honest. In the beginning, the band was the reason they got to hang out. It wasn’t about a career. It was about hanging out and throwing around microwaves on stage because why not. And somehow, that turned into an actual life.
But it hasn’t always been easy for the band. In 2011, the band took a hiatus. Not caused by any explosion, or real external issue. It was just the slow fatigue that slowly creeps in after several years on the road. I mean, eleven months out of the year in vans and hotel rooms doesn’t really sound like much of a lifestyle. And on top of that, things were getting hard with Tyson Stevens, their frontman at the time.
Stevens later died in 2014 when he was 29. With his death, an expansive hole formed within the band. Stevens was the frontman, and also a dear friend. A necessary grieving period followed. This led to internal discussions within the band as whether they would keep going at all.
“We weren’t really thinking about the future at that point,” Chad says. “But in 2019, I wrote a song called Love Forever. It was about Tyson. The response was huge. People really connected with it. So, we did a reunion tour. Then we did another one. Then we made a record.”
But finding someone to take over vocals wasn’t just about replacing a sound. It had to be the right person — someone who had a connection to the band and to Tyson. “There were a lot of things that had to line up, a lot of stipulations,” Pouyan says. “We needed someone who could perform the songs the way Tyson did — not just vocally, but with the same energy. And they had to know him. Know us. Cove Reber made sense. We’d toured with him before. He was a friend. It felt natural.”
“And now we’re better than we’ve ever been,” Chad says, plainly with no overreach.
The band just released a new single, Sin of Disrepair. There’s an album coming later this year. Then it’s back to Australia in November.
As our chat winds to a close, I sense a quiet sense of contentment within Scary Kids Scaring Kids. The hunger hasn’t gone away. It’s just been sharpened, like a knife dragged slow across a whetstone.
“I’m glad we put the time in when we were twenty,” Chad says. “Going flat-out like that. But things are different now. I’ve got kids. I’m married. My priorities have changed.”
Pouyan nods. “In other words,” he says, “we’ve got boundaries now. As a therapist would call it.”
Scary Kids Scaring Kids are touring Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth from November 14. Tickets can be purchased here
