Crazy Love Hawk

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, 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. It is rumored that the band is
also already working on new material for 2019 and 2020.