Crazy Town

Crazy Town's smash hit single “Butterfly” is seen by many as one of the tentpoles of early 2000s nu-metal, but the band has a legacy that has outlasted the song by nearly two decades. Group founders Bret 'Epic' Mazur and Seth 'Shifty' Binzer both grew up close to the music industry. Mazur's father was Billy Joel's manager, while Binzer's father had directed the film Ladies & Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones. It was hip hop that sunk its teeth into the two boys, however, with acts like Cypress Hill, N.W.A. and Ice-T alongside alternative rock bands such as The Cure catching the pair's attention. Mazur was laying down tracks from an early age and soon began working on material for the likes of Eazy-E and MC Lyte, while Binzer had begun recording demos of his own. Mazur and Binzer's initial collaboration was on an act called Brimstone Sluggers. While the Sluggers recorded tracks, however, the pair were too busy working on music for other artists and the material never coalesced into an album. However, when the pair separately ended up in rehab, they began writing to each other and the seeds for a hip hop act backed by a full rock band were planted. When Doug 'Faydoedeelay' Miller (bass), Rust Epique (guitar), Anthony 'Trouble' Valli (guitar), DJ AM (turntables), and James 'JBJ' Bradley (drums) came into the mix, Crazy Town was born. Their debut album, The Gift of Game (1999), spawned the massive hit “Butterfly,” launching them to a worldwide audience. The group seemed to be on the road to success, but when follow-up album Darkhorse (2002) failed to match the success of its predecessor, the band split up, going their separate ways in 2003. In 2007, Crazy Town announced that they had reformed, but a promised album never materialized. There was a slightly more successful attempt to get back together in 2009, with the band performing a couple of times that year and the next, and 2011 seeing a couple of tracks released. It was a subdued period, however, with former member DJ AM having died of a drug overdose in 2009 and little of substance emerging from the reformation. That changed in 2013 when it came out that Mazur and Binzer were actively recording new material. A new Crazy Town album, the first in 13 years, was released in 2015 with the name The Brimstone Sluggers and included a track crediting DJ AM as a featured artist. Things changed again in 2017, however, when Mazur announced after a year on hiatus that he would no longer be touring with Crazy Town, with Rick Dixon, Nick Diiorio and Kevin Kapler leaving soon after. Undeterred, Binzer recruited new members Elias 'ET' Tannous, Philip Nielsen and Roland Banks and, with Dixon rejoining, the newly re-branded Crazy Town X embarked on the Beautiful & Insane tour in 2019. They released a series of singles – including a 2021 re-recording of “Butterfly” featuring Ekoh – before issuing the Flirting with Disaster EP in March 2024. They also released the 2024 single “Lighthouse,” a collaboration with Silos and Judge & Jury. Founding member Seth Binzer died at the age of 49 of an accidental drug overdose on June 24, 2024.