page_title: Radioactive Chicken Heads
section_title: Band mythology
hierarchical_section_title: Radioactive Chicken Heads / Band mythology
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of punk rock band The Radioactive Chicken Heads performing at the Long Beach Zombie Walk in Long Beach, California on October 25, 2013.
context_page_description: The Radioactive Chicken Heads are an American band formed in Orange, California in 1993. Operating anonymously under the guise of mutant chickens and vegetables, the Chicken Heads' music is primarily a mix of punk rock, heavy metal and ska punk, a blend the band advertises as "Genetically Modified Punk Rock".
  Originally formed under the name Joe and the Chicken Heads, the Chicken Heads first established a cult following within the Orange County punk and ska scene for their over-the-top theatrical stage shows utilizing a wide variety of props and costumed characters, all of which tie into an elaborate fictional mythology which serves as the basis for many of the band's songs and videos. Following their name change in 2004, the Chicken Heads have since focused more on multi-media projects centered on this mythology, including music videos, concept albums, YouTube skits, stage plays, a role-playing computer game and an independently produced television pilot.
context_section_description: Having initially originated as a comic book concept, The Radioactive Chicken Heads have maintained an elaborate fictional narrative regarding the origins and universe of their characters, detailed and expanded upon through their official press biographies, in-character interviews, song lyrics, music videos, video game and television pilot.
  The Chicken Heads' origin stories can be separated into two distinct eras, delineated by the band's name change from "Joe and the Chicken Heads" into "The Radioactive Chicken Heads". As "Joe and the Chicken Heads", the group's story began on Uncle Max's farm, an otherwise normal California farm located underneath a series of high-tension electromagnetic power lines and regularly subject to government-led experiments in genetic engineering which produced massively-sized sentient vegetables, among which was the seven-foot tall carrot, Carrot Topp. Finding themselves bored with farm life, Carrot Topp and the other mutant vegetables started a punk rock band called The Vegematics, an endeavor which soon ended in tragedy when Badd Bunny, a rabbit mutated into an evil ten-ton beast by the same radiation, broke into their rehearsal space and devoured most of the members.
  The following Spring, Badd Bunny sabotaged Uncle Max's annual Easter egg hunt by beating up the Easter Bunny and planting dozens of "genetically modified super-sized-mega-jumbo eggs" around the farm, hatching an army of gigantic mutant chickens. Max's nephew, a slightly unbalanced farmhand named Joe, saw a lucrative business opportunity and taught each of the chicken beasts how to play instruments, eventually debuting on the county fair circuit as the nation's premiere man/chicken musical combo: "Joe and the Chicken Heads". Ultimately, the rising tensions of "artistic differences" within the band drove Joe to behead his bandmates and sell their meaty bodies to an unnamed "Colonel", leaving Carrot Topp to save his poultry pals by taking their heads and sewing them onto an assortment of human bodies he collected from the dumpster behind the local cryogenics lab, starting a whole new band bent on rock and roll stardom.
  Although elements of the Chicken Heads' original origin story served as the basis for the 2013 video game Badd Bunny Breakout, the band's official backstory was almost entirely retconned following their name change to "The Radioactive Chicken Heads" in 2004, completely removing the character of Joe and the setting of Uncle Max's farm. As most thoroughly detailed in Tales From The Coop and "The Radioactive Chicken Heads Show", Carrot Topp and the Chicken Heads are instead presented as the accidental creations of Dr. Baron Von Kluckinstein, a maniacal mad scientist conducting experiments on vegetables and poultry to make super-sized "frankenfoods". Kept as prisoners in his secret laboratory, the Chicken Heads eventually break out to live freely as a vegetable/poultry punk band, all the while fighting off Dr. Kluckinstein's sizable menagerie of monsters and creatures ordered to bring them back to captivity.
caption: Carrot Topp being attacked by Badd Bunny at the 2013 Long Beach Zombie Walk.
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