The band started as something else, another band that was forced to re-evaluate its intentions and chart a new way forward in those artistically precarious times of the late 2010s. All they needed was a new name to go with the new vision. In 2019 Crisis Actor emerged as a snide laugh and sick joke of a reflection on the times. Tony Knox, (No More Heroes KXLU Radio Show Host) Zach Crawford, (filmmaker and former radio DJ) and Jonathan Ihejeto, (Rapper known as Jet 2) stitched together the through lines of their influences ranging from no-wave to afro-beat and everything in between, pulling from personal experience to unleash a batch of songs to play throughout all the dinghy bars and DIY spaces across southern California. Proto and Post punk influences alike would percolate, signs of The Stooges, Gang of Four and any number of others were tested and pushed and prodded by polyrhythms rolling the soundscapes in new directions. Finally they had scrounged up enough money from playing shows to get a couple days of studio time.
“False Flag,” Crisis Actor’s debut record was recorded a month before the stay at home orders of March 2020. The record was a high pressurized bug-out bag trapping portraits of life in the media saturated city-scape, murky lines of reality and fiction blurring together all in a rapidly changing world with surveillance and celebrity boiling everyone's brains to new limits.
After recording “False Flag” the band played fairly close to home and relentlessly for about a year, eventually shipping out to the midwest for a rash of shows over a week and a half. There at a friend’s home studio they would record their cover of “Pusherman” while not on the road.
Crisis Actor continued to play when they got back to LA until they decided to tackle the second record. The time had come to show they do it all over again. Returning to House Of Tommothy Studios in Los Angeles, where they had recorded their debut, the mission had evolved, and the approach had become more fluid in its experimentation and jam-oriented writing style. The world had changed a bit and the disorientation of daily life had evolved. Seemingly all the themes on the first record hadn't quite lost their flavor. In the time since, all the conditions that lead up to recording had only come to appear more dire and confusing with a few dashes of abstraction. It was time to dial up the unhinged detachment from normal and hell, even throw in some synths and a few percussions unorthodox for the average punk record.
All the record needed now was a home, if anyone would take it. As luck would have it, Jello Biafra was just unhinged enough to see something in these sardonic LA punks that caught his ear. The band signed with Alternative Tentacles in 2025 and would begin working on building a visual theme to enhance their live performances. Archaic analog video gear, old propaganda films from the middle century and enough psychedelic undertones to entrance or annoy the hell out of anyone who could bear to watch. The band was invited to open for Tentacle Fest in June of 2026 and is set to release their second record, “Limited Hangout” on Alternative Tentacles in November 2026.
