Behind the Bars of Denver Metal Band CodeFlawed

During his darkest days growing up in Englewood, Christian Workman always knew he could turn to music. He found particular refuge and comfort in metal.

A guitarist, he'd harbored plans to form a band, a more serious group of musicians who would play a mix of nu-metal or metalcore — two subgenres he’d gotten into during high school in the late 1990s. Tool had quickly become a favorite after its 1996 album, Ænima. There was something about Maynard James Keenan’s vocal delivery and the odd time signatures employed by guitarist Adam Jones and drummer Danny Carey that spoke to him.

“Metal has always been my thing,” Workman says. “Tool wasn’t so much screaming. They had a really strange message with the music that really flowed and made you think more cerebral in a sense of ‘What am I listening to?’ instead of beat music to make your butt move.”

Unfortunately, Workman’s life took a turn away from such rock-star aspirations for a while, He didn’t get around to formally making his own music until he found himself in prison, when he had nothing but time to pick up his instrument and play. For the eight years he was inside, it was more about maintaining his mental health than anything else. “I was in a band in prison when I first went in. I was kind of a closet guitar player. Nobody really knew I played my whole life. I got into bands there and really just found a love for music from there," he explains.

"Metal has definitely taken me to where I am now.”

And that’s saying something. Shortly after graduating high school in 2001, Workman was behind the wheel when a drunk-driving crash claimed the lives of two of his friends — Adam Neyer, aged eighteen, and Nicole Scott, who was fifteen. He and another classmate, Adam Deveraux, also eighteen years old, survived, although both suffered serious injuries. Workman says he “broke everything" and remained in a coma for nearly a month before facing the devastating reality of the situation.

“Waking up thirty days later is when all the madness [began] with court and all the cases and finding out what actually happened,” he recalls. “Everything kind of took off from there.”

A year later, in 2002, the nineteen-year-old Workman was sentenced to fourteen years for vehicular homicide.

“Prison was a trip. It was serious,” Workman says. “Of course, the nature behind everything was serious. Despite it being an accident, there was alcohol involved. It really hit home with high schoolers."
He started out in the Colorado Department of Corrections. "From there, in prison, I got in a lot of trouble," he recalls. "I went through this phase where I thought, 'Nobody cares about me and my life and the situation, so screw it, I’m just going to do this.' I worked out and got muscular and got into a lot of trouble and ended up getting sent to Mississippi. It was wild.”

He wound up in Mississippi's Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, where he joined a prison riot in 2004. Finally, he got out in 2009, and wrote about his experience in Black Boxed: Coming of Age Prison Walls, which was published in 2011.

Aside from the post-release writing, music became his main antidote, physically and emotionally. “My left hand got shattered so they had to rebuild it. Playing a guitar was one thing that helped me physically stay focused,” Workman explains, adding that being in bands and playing music also helped in "mentally understanding everything that I went through.”

Now 42 years old, Workman still lives in Englewood, where he currently works for the city as a water-plant operator and finally got around to starting a band, CodeFlawed, in 2020. “Englewood’s a really cool community because everyone’s connected and knows everybody,” he says, reminiscing about earlier years there before the accident, when he and his neighborhood friends would pal around and play sports together.

He's now found comradery in CodeFlawed, an act that includes Jonney Coldhands (guitar, bass and vocals), Caleb Brown (vocals, guitar and bass) and Robbie Pace (drums). Through the band, Workman is continuing to work through his past while regaining a new sense of self.

“It just came out of nowhere,” he says of the group getting together. “It’s an outlet for me and what I feel. Putting it through music has definitely been a way to get the message out and the feeling 'This was an accident, but instead of laying down, this is a chance to rise again.'

“When you listen to music, you can feel things. We wanted to portray that," he adds. "This is pretty powerful stuff based on what we are trying to say.”

The progressive heavy-metal quartet has released a handful of songs, including “Mad Money” last month, and is working toward releasing a more proper debut sometime this year. “We don’t really know what to release yet, but it’s exciting in trying to figure it out,” Workman shares. “We’re just having fun and trying to throw it out there into the world and see how certain things kind of shake out. Just get out and get our name out. But we’re releasing our album, and we’ll have it finished by the end of the year."

In the meantime, CodeFlawed is hitting the local circuit, playing out as much as possible. The band’s next show is on Thursday, February 20, at Globe Hall; local acts Ripcords and Tinnitus are also on the bill. Right now, the group’s ultimate goal is to play the Gothic Theatre. “We’re trying to get there,” Workman says.

For him, metal is no longer about screaming at people and releasing inner rage, but trying to create an empowering presence and bring people together behind the message that it’s okay to not be okay. Workman has certainly learned that over the past twenty-plus years.

“When you listen to it, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re going, it’s okay to be upset. We’re all experiencing these crazy things. I went through a lot of stuff with the emotions of prison. You could break down and cry, but...you can’t do that, because the eyes are watching you or whoever. It changes you. It hardens you. It makes you not really somebody people want to be around,” he says.

“This is giving us a chance, even through the midst of things, to let it go, open up and feel what you’re supposed to feel through this. It’s okay to feel pain. Sometimes you have shitty days. You don’t always have to have a smile on. Just be yourself and listen to it.”

Even the band's name references that sentiment. “CodeFlawed started with the concept of every code since the beginning of time has been flawed, like biting the apple and all these things,” Workman explains. “We kind of do a play on, like, ‘We’re all screwed. We’re all flawed, but we’re all in this together.’ We’re all coded together. It’s like, ‘Hey, man, come have fun, but you're just as flawed as the rest of us.’”

Workman can’t imagine what his life would be like if he didn't have the ever-giving healing power of metal music. While it’s not a cure-all, being part of CodeFlawed provides a conduit for whatever he and his bandmates are going through at any particular time and offers a much-needed reprieve. And Workman hopes that music can do the same thing for others who may be feeling a similar sort of way.

“When we jam and when you get a lot of this stuff out, you’re drained, you’re emotionally drained, like leaving a therapy session. Emotionally, playing is really strange," he muses, "because if you don’t have an outlet, what are you doing with all of this? You get depressed.

"After we play, it truly feels like this therapeutic moment of walking out of something that we just created and thinking, ‘Man, wherever this goes, whoever listens to it, it really doesn’t matter if we’re famous; the point is, we felt good putting it out there,’ and now it’s out for everyone to hear," he concludes. "It’s almost like leaving that behind.”

CodeFlawed, with Ripcords and Tinnitus, 7 p.m. Thursday, February 20, Globe Hall, 4483 Logan Street. Tickets are $20-$25.