Biography
Crazy Love Hawk is a 5-piece progressive metal-core band from the Oklahoma City area. The band was formed by Matt Nguyen and Shaun Ladymon as a 2-piece easy-core/happy hardcore project in late 2011. They released early demos of the project in March and April of 2012. Their debut full-length album "Keep Moving Forward" was released in January 2013 with Matt and Shaun writing and recording all the instruments as well as the vocals. The style was referred to by some as "Disney-core" since all the songs on the album were tributes to either Disney movies or other animated movies.
By March 2013, they began playing shows acquiring Max Young on drums and a couple fill-in musicians on guitar and bass. Matt performed harsh vocals and Shaun did clean vocals. In June of 2013, after Max left to pursue other endeavors, the band finally attained a full set of permanent members, which has remained mostly unchanged since then with Mike Bauer on drums, Jonathan Cameron on lead guitar, Ian Harms on rhythm guitar, Shaun Ladymon doing clean vocals, and Matt Nguyen doing harsh vocals. With this new lineup, the band self-produced its first music video in August of 2013 for their song, "Where's My Super Suit." In early September of 2013, they were the first band to release a metal-core cover of "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus. Shaun was currently working for a music magazine and was sent the song for review 2 weeks before it was released to the public. That afforded them the time to track the cover and release it right after Miley's version was released. In October of the same year, they released a single titled "Check it Out, I'm a Frankenhomie" which was released with a music video of the song. The music video also featured Mate Lucas who played bass with the band for a while. This was the last song to feature Shaun on clean vocals before moving to guitar due to a vocal injury and having Ian take over clean vocal duties.
In May of 2014, the band released a single titled, "I Never Got Past the Yetis" which was a tribute to the movie, Rise of the Guardians. This was the first song to feature Ian on clean vocals and Shaun on rhythm guitar. This was also the last song to incorporate their original easy-core/happy hardcore sound. In June 2014, they released their EP, "Press Start" which departed from the band's original sound and broke into the metal-core/progressive metal-core sound. With the release of this EP, the band posted a studio play-through video for one of the songs on the EP titled "Endure & Survive," a tribute to the video game, The Last of Us. The EP featured tributes to several other video games, including Metal Gear Rising, Halo 4, Zelda, Final Fantasy and God of War.
2015 was a year of many shows for the band, and not a lot of writing took place. Toward the end of the year, Shaun began writing the first couple songs for their next full-length which was determined to be Tim Burton themed. During this period, Dalton Lott formerly of A Wolf. A Liar. was filling in on bass.
In 2016, Shaun began heavily writing new music for the band. In September, the band released "Lonely Miles," a single based on the protagonist in the video game Fallout 4, which upped the ante from a technical aspect, incorporating more complicated rhythm patterns and riffs. The song featured a guitar lead written by Justin Clarkson who was considering joining the band, but decided not to so that he could pursue mission work. In October, the band entered the studio and began tracking for their new full-length. During this time, Skyler Wilkerson began filling in for the band at shows on rhythm guitar and Shaun moved to bass. On Halloween, the band released a teaser version of a new song titled "Invisible but Everywhere" which was a tribute to Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas.
In 2017, the band was in full-swing recording mode for the new full-length album. On June 23rd, the band released Madlands, their new full-length album and tribute to Tim Burton, featuring 13 songs based on characters in movies that Tim Burton either wrote, directed or produced. This album was their most technical yet. On October 18th of 2017, the band posted an update video on their Youtube announcing that they would be releasing a 5-year anniversary re-issue of their debut album, Keep Moving Forward. For Christmas in 2017, the band released a metal-core cover of the classic Christmas song “Nothin’ for Christmas.”
In 2018, the band played local and regional shows showcasing the new material from their Madlands album. As 2018 came to a close, Mike (drummer) and singer (Ian) decided to leave the band. Mike moved to Colorado and Ian decided to move on to do his own thing. After this occurred, it left the two founding members, Matt and Shaun as well as guitarist, JC.
Early 2019, the band posted that they were holding auditions for the open positions in the band. By February, Crazy Love Hawk added Trevor Whitmire on drums and Austin Filippone on bass. Shaun moved from guitar back to the singer position. With the lineup set, the band began immediately writing new material. In May of 2019, the band began playing shows again by way of a personal invitation to open for touring act, ISSUES and shortly followed that up by opening for Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. At the RJA show, Crazy Love Hawk debuted a new, unreleased song. This song would later be announced as the band’s first single with the new lineup and was expected to come out in late 2019 or early 2020. In October of 2019, the band announced “CLH 2020” which meant lots of new content to be released in 2020. In December of 2020, it was confirmed that the band would be releasing at least one new song each month of the year in 2020.
In January 2020, the band announcement by way of their Instagram page that the first song release of CLH 2020 would be a new single called “The Flying Ahhh!” which derived its name from the movie An American Tale: Fievel Goes West. The band also announced that a music video is in the works for this song. The band released “The Flying Ahhh!” on January 31st by way of a video on YouTube with links to download the song.
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