Karyn Crisis was born just outside of Chicago. Karyn has always been creative and has experimented with sculpture, photography, painting, drawing, performance art, music, and clothing design. Her clothing label, Westenders, sold in several Chicagoland boutiques and  received a write up in the Chicago Tribune.

After receiving a scholarship to Parsons School of Design, Karyn moved to New York City where she joined the experimental metal band Crisis and designed their t shirts graphics, logos and album art for 12 years. She also created a 62 page graphic novel based on the artwork she created for Crisis.

Karyn is currently on hiatus from Crisis and is focusing on her art.

Karyn Crisis lives and works in the Bay Area, CA.

An apocalyptic vision would drive her need for visual exorcism, but it would be her constant struggles with life and death that would ultimately shape Karyn Crisis’ artistic focus.

The issue of sexism has also had a profound impact on Karyn, and it’s brought out a rage in her that wills her to fight against this world that would rather relegate her to a second class citizen. Karyn refuses to believe that women aren’t equal to men.

Karyn’s oil paintings are visual representations of men and women trapped in dark journeys of the human spirit. Some struggle to both physically and spiritually break free, while others refuse to leave the darkness behind.

Like photographs, these paintings are meant to capture people in solemn, private moments of fear, spiritual longing, isolation, self-realization and peace. Each person’s gold halos illuminate their secrets, intentions, identities and sources of power.

Karyn’s paintings also turn the myths of the “evil woman” on their ugly head.

Karyn Crisis is a singer and an artist who follows no leaders and refuses to compromise the integrity of her art.

In 1993, Karyn Crisis embraced the dark journey inward in search of finding her own voice to set her free. She auditioned for and became the vocalist of the New York City band Crisis, pioneering a movement of female- fronted, emotional music in the “boys club” of metal that is only now coming to fruition more that 12 years later.

In 1993 Crisis set the precedent for female-fronted heavy bands to come by being so radically different than any other band in metal and hardcore at that time both musically and by having female vocalist. Except for Nausea in the punk scene and Fear of God in the metal scene, female-fronted bands, if there were any, were relegated to the under-underground.

Karyn Crisis is considered the first female vocalist on par with male vocalists in the metal and hardcore genres, boasting the most flexible voice in metal. With a stage performance like “an exorcism” and with the voice of “an angel and a demon” all wrapped into one, Karyn taps into the darkness within and challenges the rules of what a metal singer should sound like.

Regardless of how the genres of metal and hardcore have changed, especially now with more mainstream female-fronted bands, Karyn Crisis stands out, having held her own; following the path of no others but instead forging her own. Hardly a female vocalist can be introduced to the metal scene without being compared to her. More than a decade after Crisis came screaming onto the metal scene, Karyn Crisis remains a measuring stick against which female vocalists in metal are compared. 

Love her or hate her, Karyn Crisis is the litmus test of the true pioneering spirit of women in heavy music.