Anarchy

Anthony Arland Keystone, most widely known by his nickname and stage name, Anarchy, is an American musician, rapper, singer, and songwriter. He co-founded Brooklyn-based metalcore band Edge of Infinity in 2012 with Kato Winters and Athena Brookes, and is the band's primary unclean vocalist, as well as their bassist, rap vocalist, and occasional songwriter.

Anthony Arland Keystone was born on May 7, 1994, in Fresno, California. The family lived in a mobile home park northeast of downtown, in relative poverty. His mother was a mail-order bride from South Korea who acted as a stay at home mom, while Keystone's father worked various blue-collar jobs. Keystone had one sibling, an older brother named Hunter Michael Keystone (now deceased.)^[1][2]

Keystone's home life was abusive.^[ibid.] His father was an alcoholic, and frequently violent with his wife and children during drunken rages. Keystone’s older brother attempted to protect both Keystone and their mother as best he could, going as far as taking beatings in their steads.^[4][5] Keystone and his brother were pulled from public school in 2003 in order to conceal the abuse, which was severe enough to result in Keystone still having multiple permanent scars.^[1][4] Keystone's older brother enlisted in the American military at age 17, in an effort to gain financial independence which he could use to extricate his brother and mother from the violent household. However, in 2008, during an ill-prepared training exercise, Hunter Keystone was fatally injured and two other privates were wounded by an IED that went unnoticed when the area was cleared.^[4][7][9] The injured soldiers and the Keystone family recieved monetary compensation of an undisclosed sum,^[9] though Anarchy Keystone claimed to have been unaware that his family had recieved any money, saying he would "not be surprised either way" if it had been an insignificant amount, or "if [his] dad just drank it all away."^[14]

The abuse in the household escalated, and in August of 2008, Keystone ran away from home after his father slashed his face with a broken whiskey bottle.^[2] He met his future band-mate and husband^†, Cheyenne Keystone, in a rail yard while the two were train hopping, and credits Cheyenne with giving him the nickname "Anarchy" at that time.^[ibid.] Cheyenne had become involved with smuggling illicit substances as a drug mule at an early age, and Keystone involved himself in the same once the pair returned by rail to New York City, where Cheyenne had come from.

Within a couple years, both boys were struggling with opioid addictions,^[4] which were then used as leverage to involve them in trafficking and exploitation.^[4][6] The pair suffered various abuses and eventually became seperated in the chaos of their situation, with each believing the other to be dead,^[4][8] either due to overdose or murder. In 2011, Keystone (then age 17) did overdose in the street,^[3] but was found by his bandmates-to-be, Kato Winters, Athena Brookes, and Sethfire Brookes, who got him medical attention and saved his life.^[4]

Though Keystone has worked with law enforcement agencies in recent years^{[citation needed]} to attempt to track down and prosecute those involved in the victimization of him and his husband, success has been limited due to the passage of time. He remains an outspoken advocate for human and child trafficking awareness, and has incorporated his experiences of such into his lyrical work.

Prior to 2011, Keystone felt more like a visual artist than a musical one, "if an artist of any kind," and mainly engaged with the arts through tattoo design.^[8] He only began exploring musically after being taken in by his band-to-be, who encouraged him towards a musical career.^[4][10] With assistance from Winters and Athena Brookes, Keystone was able to master bass guitar with relative ease, and readily took to screaming vocals, which he found cathartic.^[14] Winters and Brookes had been playing together for several years already before meeting Keystone, whose induction into becoming a musician officialized Edge of Infinity as a band in many ways.

Edge of Infinity has gained additional members since, taking on Sethfire Brookes as a part-time vocalist and lyricist during the band's formation; then Aetos Cammell in 2016, and Cheyenne Keystone in 2018. The current members of Edge of Infinity are as follows:

• Kato Winters – lead vocals, lead guitar, songwriter (2012–present)
• Anarchy Keystone – bass, unclean vocals, rapping (2012–present)
• Athena Brookes – drums, occasional backing vocals (2012–present)
• Sethfire Brookes – occasional vocals (2012–present)
• Aetos Cammell – rhythm guitar, backing vocals, violin (2016–present), keyboard (2016-2018)
• Cheyenne Keystone (née Reykjavík) – keyboard, occasional backing vocals, synthesizer, turntables, samples, programming (2018–present)

Edge of Infinity released their debut album, We Are Not Our Scars, in July of 2013, which featured two tracks written exclusively by Keystone: "Dopesick || Hopesick" and Come Home || Empty Years, both of which were well-received and cemented Keystone as a regularly contributing lyricist. The songs were noted by fans to both utilize a pair of parallel lines to break the titles in half, sparking numerous discussions about the quirk on fan forums. When asked about one fan theory, that the titles were divided in half to metaphorically represent Keystone's own life being divided into "before (the band)" and "after (the band)" halves, Keystone clarified that he "just felt kind of indecisive, and in the second one, wanted to spell something," but that he "wish[ed] it were that deep."^[17] Bandmate and primary lyricist Kato Winters cited the accidental metaphor as signifying the depth of Keystone's lyrical talent, and solicited further contribution from Keystone as the band continued to put out albums.

The discography of Edge of Infinity consists of five full-length albums and one EP (listed below) as well as numerous demos and singles.

• We Are Not Our Scars (2013)
• Broken Glass Just Tastes Like Blood (2014)
• Suburban Casualties (2016)
• Concrete As A Painkiller EP (2017)
• B⬛RN D⬛WN Y⬛⬛R SCH⬛⬛L (2019)
• With A Hope-lit Lighthouse and Honest Storms (2021)

Following the two tracks of lyrical work Keystone contributed for the initial album, he additionally wrote the single, "Wolfboy", which was released between the band's first and second albums. Keystone wrote two tracks on Broken Glass Just Tastes Like Blood, ("Bottleneck" and "You Know What They Say") and supplied input on an additional two ("Cut Deep" and the title track, "Broken Glass Just Tastes Like Blood"). The third album, Edge of Infinity's best-selling, Suburban Casualties, featured not only Keystone's lyrical work, but also his input on musical style: The album involved a much heavier usage of him doing rap-style vocals than its predecessors, an element of the album's overall spirit he specifically advocated for.^[15][16] Additionally, he contributed lyrical work/input to, or wrote outright, eight out of the album's twelve songs, and chose one of the two songs that the band covered; only uninvolved in the writing of the band's original songs "13, 32, 26 (Under The Gun)" and "Bridgelight." Keystone was uninvolved lyrically with the Concrete As A Painkiller EP, as well as Edge of Infinity's most controversial^☦ album, B⬛RN D⬛WN Y⬛⬛R SCH⬛⬛L, due mostly to the fact that Keystone "didn't go to school for any meaningful length of time," and therefore "never had the opportunity to get fucked up by it."^[11] He returned to passionate lyrical work for the band's 2021 album, With A Hope-Lit Lighthouse And Honest Storms, for which he contributed work on three tracks: "Horizon", "Rough Seas, Good Sailors", and "Now I Can See (By Your Light)", the last of which being a duet between him and his husband which had been released as a "teaser" single several months before the album as a whole.

Like his band members Athena Brookes and Kato Winters^[20], Keystone identified Linkin Park as a defining influence for both himself and his work in the band.^[10] Keystone's rap-type vocal work has specifically been compared to that of , particularly his work in Suburban Casualties.^[16] Keystone has additionally identified Limp Bizkit, Dangerkids, Beartooth, Novelists, Hollywood Undead, and Scarlxrd as artists whose work had significant impact on his vision for the music he endeavored to create.^[17] Keystone's most frequent source of lyrical inspiration is his personal life and lived experience, with most of his songs straddling the line between punk-type activism and the raw, intimate emotion typical of the post-hardcore genre. Though the band has shied away from a genre label, Keystone has emphasized the influence the nu metal, rap rock, and trap metal genres have had on his concept for the band, and how to keep it from falling too neatly into the confines of any one label.

Keystone has long maintained a very close connection with his bandmates, who he has sometimes referred to as his "found family" or "band family." After moving in with Kato Winters and Athena and Sethfire Brookes in 2011, Keystone was able to recover from his heroin addiction and get back on his feet, the credit for which he has repeatedly given to his band-mates. Winters and Keystone went on to share an apartment, accompanied by Athena Brookes from early 2015 until her move in 2017. Keystone and Winters have continued to live together, joined by Cheyenne Keystone in 2018.^[13]

Though the entire band indentifies as LGBT, and most members have been relatively open about such, Keystone relays that his journey of self-discovery was a long and difficult one. He experienced internalized homophobia^[25] and was in denial about his sexuality for many years,^[16][24] frequently attributing his same-sex attraction to his trauma. He attempted to have "normal" relationships with women which failed to pan out*, after which he experimented reluctantly with identifying as "bicurious" and then bisexual.^[24] Keystone eventually acknowledged himself to be gay sometime in 2018, and came out as such after he and his now-husband began dating in the second half of the year.^[23]

Keystone identifies as an atheist, but has verbally distanced himself from the more aggressive atheism of his band-mate, Kato Winters, stating: "It [Christianity] just isn't something I believe in. I'm not mad about it: I don't have any strong feelings in any direction. But if it means enough for my band to make music about it, I'll sing what they put in front of me with the passion that they want. But I care more about them than about the messages."^[17]

Outside of his musical career, Keystone bartends locally^[19], and has expressed gratitude for the job, having experienced difficulties securing steady or enjoyable employment in his younger years due to his appearance and history.^[15]

Keystone's life between 2009 and 2011 was consumed by a heroin addiction which ravaged him physically and psychologically, particularly since his addiction was manufactured and then exploited by traffickers, who used drugs to keep Keystone and other victims under their control and trapped in abuse situations.^[4][12] Though his heroin use didn't start as an attempt at self-medicating, Keystone voiced that it was easy to view it in that light, as it helped him to endure the abuses he was suffering in his day-to-day life at the time, and to muffle the traumas of his childhood.^[4]

In December of 2011, Keystone accidentally overdosed^[3] and was rescued by his bandmates. In the aftermath he was able to get methadone treatment and group therapy,^[4] which he found highly beneficial. He described his long, difficult recovery from heroin use as being a situation where "'easy' wasn’t [even] part of the equation,"^[10] but with the support and assistance he found in his band, Keystone was able to come off of methadone in the winter of 2014, after three years of maintenance treatment and at least two previous attempts at tapering off of the drug. As of 2022, he has been heroin-free for eleven years, and entirely clean for eight.

Despite his family experience as a child being shadowed by abuse, Keystone identifies as, and is described as, intensely family-oriented. He attributes this to the bond he had with his late brother, Hunter Keystone, who he feels taught him what family "truly meant," and says that despite all differences, he picked up on such a sense of fraternity from Sethfire Brookes during their first interactions^[3][4], which was a strong component to Keystone's decision to stay with his rescuers and pursue treatment.

In 2015/2016, Keystone learned that his mother had divorced his father and returned to Korea.^[5] He ended up reconnecting with her in early 2019,^[ibid.] an experience he described as immensely healing. He now has a close bond with his mother, step-father, and especially his half-brother, despite their 20-year age difference. Keystone didn't expect to want a large family of his own, but the bond he fosters with his half-brother, and a desire to help children living lives similar to his or those of his "found family," results in him discovering in himself a love of fatherhood. He and his spouse will be moving to a home in West Hempstead, NY in 2025 and taking in their first child, Jaime Keystone, as a foster in 2028; legally adopting them in 2030. Keystone's biological child, Cooper Keystone, (carried by Athena Brookes as a surrogate), will be born in 2032. Keystone and Cheyenne will additionally take in (and eventually adopt) Rosalie Keystone in 2038, and Kaya and Kimber Keystone in 2041.