96 Quite Bitter Beings is the essential CKY song. The debut single from the band’s 1999 debut album, Volume 1, it also provided the unofficial soundtrack for the alternative community that was building around a re-energised MTV, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games and reality stunt series Jackass.
That riff is still undeniable, while the menacing lyrics of teenage angst set against bristling escapism continue to offer a moody sense of hope. However, CKY co-founder and now frontman of 96 Bitter Beings, Deron Miller, is bemused by its success.
“I really don’t consider 96 Quite Bitter Beings a very special song,” he admits with a grin. “It’s not well crafted, with no real chorus beyond the guitar riff, but it has this longevity. It just refuses to die.”
CKY – or to give them their full, original name, ‘Camp Kill Yourself’ – formed from the ashes of various groups Deron and Jess Margera had played in after high school. After meeting audio engineer and guitarist Chad I Ginsburg, they began working on material for an album in November 1997, with the band officially forming in 1998.
At first, they tried their hand at radio-friendly alternative rock in a bid to sign a record deal and live out their guitar hero dreams… but it didn’t work out. “We got rejected so many times trying to do what was current, we decided to just do what we wanted to do instead,” says Deron.
Channelling their love for death metal, blues, punk and grunge, CKY spent close to two years slowly recording their debut album, heading into the studio whenever they could afford to lay down a track. At one point, they thought the album was finally done but one track, Shippensburg, just didn’t feel right, so Deron joined Jess in his family’s basement to write the final track.
“The pressure was on,” he says, with the trio impatient to start sending out demos and get out of their hometown of West Chester, Pennsylvania. After being forced to relocate all their gear to Jess’s parents’ bedroom due to a flooded basement, the pair started messing about on their instruments and that riff just happened. Both Jess and Deron had the same reaction: “Holy shit, this is incredible!”
The pair wanted to keep working on the track but their shift at UPS as truck loaders was due to start… so they phoned up their boss and pretended they’d been in a car accident. “They knew we were in a band, so I don’t know if they actually believed us,” says Deron.
But it didn’t matter. A week later, they were in the studio recording the instrumentals for 96 Quite Bitter Beings, the lyrics coming soon after. “I didn’t want to write a song about everyday life. I wanted to be ambitious,” recalls Deron.
Taking inspiration from the other nine tracks on what would become Volume 1, he told the story of Hellview, a fictional place he’d first created in pre-CKY band Oil and their track Thanks For The Ride. “I just thought it would be cool to write about a place that doesn’t exist. Hellview is a time warp. You’re not welcome there,” says Deron, comparing it to Camp Crystal Lake from iconic horror franchise Friday The 13th.
He returned to the idea with 2002’s Escape From Hellview and 2009’s Hellions On Parade. Despite kickstarting an album-spanning trilogy of songs, the ideas “all came together really quickly”, he admits. “Apart from wanting to make it the best thing we’d done, not a lot of thought went into it.”
With a new opening track sorted, CKY had a debut album ready to put out into the world. But with nu metal ruling the airwaves as far as rock and metal was concerned, they had to pare back their ambitions.
“You couldn’t get signed to a major label unless you sounded like every other heavy band,” Deron explains. “We were doing something that didn’t sound like anything else. That was bad news back then.”
The band self-released Volume 1 and printed up a couple of thousand copies to sell in local record shops. After a month, they teamed up with Californian clothing company Volcom for distribution, who’d just launched an indie label, Volcom Entertainment. “We sold 50,000 copies through this tiny little label,” remembers Deron. “It all happened really quickly.”
Things really took off when CKY got involved with Jackass, though. In 1999, Jess’s skateboarding brother Bam and his friends put together a collection of stunts, pranks and tricks they’d recorded themselves. They released it under the CKY banner, with CKY’s music providing the soundtrack. The band also featured in a handful of videos but were worried about broken bones so tried to stick to the music as much as possible.
These underground CKY collections would go on to form the basis of Jackass, with Bam Margera, Brandon DiCamillo, Ryan Dunn and Chris Raab joining the Los Angeles-based Big Brother group of Johnny Knoxville, Wee Man and Chris Pontius for the generation-defining show.
A compilation video soundtracked by 96 Quite Bitter Beings was put together to promote the MTV series and was heavily featured across the channel. “I think we just got lucky,” says Deron “I honestly believe if it had been any other song, that’s what we’d been talking about today.”
Following the success of Volume 1, CKY were picked up by Island Records for their second album and a reissue of Volume 1, further spreading 96 Quite Bitter Beings’ reach. Rather than practising in a basement prone to flooding and scraping together funds to record, the band spent six months living in a hotel in Hawaii while writing 2002’s Infiltrate.Destroy.Rebuild.
“It was such a culture shock. We were 20-year-old kids with an endless piggy bank. We had a lot of fun,” Deron says. However, Deron believes the record company didn’t want the band to get too big. “They didn’t want to have to go and find more bands like CKY. They basically paid us to shut up and do our thing, but they never tried to make us superstars. We didn’t know how long it was going to last either, so we were flying by the seat of our pants.”
CKY’s second album went on to sell more than their debut and led to support slots with Guns N’ Roses and Metallica. “Everything about those days was insane,” says Deron. “We were just riding this wave. It was a constant party. It’s amazing that none of us died.”
In 2005, CKY released their third album, An Answer Can Be Found, while Carver City followed in 2009. “The Jackass thing had gone by then, and we should have disappeared with it, but people knew we were a real, credible band,” Deron says of the band’s longevity.
“We always felt like we were on the brink of the mainstream, but we never crossed over. We could have been much bigger, but the labels didn’t want to take that chance. We all started to resent the fact that we never seemed to get the same opportunities that other bands did, though. We got spoiled, I guess.”
With the rise of streaming doing a number on album sales, and Deron believing the band had stopped moving forward, he started to feel burnt out and wanted to take a break from the band to spend time with his kids around 2014. “I stepped away, but I never quit. And I couldn’t be fired,” he says. “I took a break, but those guys wanted to do their own thing without me, so they did. We just stopped talking.”
A messy break-up ensued where both Deron and the remaining members of CKY would play shows under the moniker. Ultimately CKY forged on with Chad taking over vocals. Meanwhile, Deron formed the band MechaCKY, later renamed 96 Bitter Beings. The group was designed to “pick up where Carver City left off”, says Deron. “It felt like I had unfinished business.”
So far, the group have released two records of original material – 2018’s Camp Pain and 2022’s Synergy Restored. 2024’s Return To Hellview sees Deron re-record choice cuts from CKY’s back catalogue. “They’re eerily similar, which was the goal,” he admits. “As the singer, the guitar player and the writer of the songs, there are things about the original versions that bother me. I would really like to be able to listen to them again.”
The nine tracks on Return To Hellview are the ones Deron wanted to start with, and feature axed Volume 1 track Shippensburg and several tracks from major label debut Infiltrate. Destroy. Rebuild. While 96 Quite Bitter Beings is conspicuous by its absence – especially given the band’s name – the song’s enduring success acts as a source of inspiration for Deron.
“It’s the shortest amount of time I’ve ever spent on a song, yet it’s by far the most successful thing I’ve ever written,” he admits. “I’m trying to go back to that way of making music. Back then, we didn’t overthink anything, we just did it. That’s how you get the coolest stuff you’ll ever do.”
Return To Hellview is out now via Nuclear Blast.
