PITTSBURGH — Reba Meyers has been more than just a fiery participant, with great hair, in the violent mayhem of Code Orange. She's been the palate cleanser, taking the mic for a few of her own songs that change the pace from testosterone-fueled hardcore punk/metal to grungy indie-rock.

Now, with Code Orange on hiatus, the singer-guitarist from Greenfield has a few things happening on the side. Not only is she rolling out a solo project, but she's also touring as a member of Marilyn Manson's band.

"I've always wanted to do music by myself," she says. "I've been writing a lot since I was a kid, just writing songs that were kind of unfinished. As soon as I started playing guitar, I started writing more and more melodies, and not everything always fit into that context. I got into the band really young, and I was a little too young to really understand what the possibilities were for myself."

When she says "young," she's not kidding.

Meyers was in middle school when she and her friends at Pittsburgh CAPA started the Grammy-nominated band, which was a good deal removed from what she grew up on.

"There was always music in my house, music in the kitchen when I was growing up," she says, "Just kind of more old folk material, stuff that my parents would put on. But it was always like good stuff. They had good taste in terms of songwriters. My dad loved jazz, he loved Neil Young, Miles Davis, The Beatles, The Cure. It was just a variety — what normal parents would listen to who grew up in the '60s, '70s."

Meyers played flute in elementary school before gravitating to the cheap guitar her sister got from Target.

"I just kind of commandeered it," Meyers says. "She wasn't super interested in it and I was enamored with playing music. When I think back, I have a memory of seeing someone play the guitar and wanting to play it. Then I just messed with it, and, for some reason, connected with it naturally. Then I met Jami [Morgan] and other friends in middle school and started kind of getting into punk rock. I always was a bit attuned to the darker, more emotional stuff."

She and Morgan started going to shows at Mr. Roboto Project and other all-ages venues, and they formed Code Orange Kids in 2008 first as a straight punk band, then more hardcore with the addition of guitarist Bob Rizzo. They released a handful of EPs before signing to Deathwish and releasing the acclaimed debut "Love Is Love/Return to Dust" in 2012 with the lineup of Morgan, Meyers, Eric Balderose and Joe Goldman.

With the 2014 album "I Am King," the band dropped "Kids" from the name and started playing bigger tours and festivals. One of the standouts on the album was Meyers' "Bleeding in the Blur," which became an official theme song for NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn III. The fourth album, "Underneath," earned them their first of two Grammy nominations along with the notoriety of staging the first notable livestream of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown.

The band's hiatus, in January 2024, came a few months after fifth album "The Above," on grounds of a health problems for guitarist Dominic Landolina.

Meyers welcomed the chance to focus on solo material that had piling up over the years.

"I love playing extreme music," she says, "but that side of myself was just getting so much love for such a long time and so much attention that I started kind of only seeing that side of myself. It was zoomed in, and I needed to give more attention to my softer sides. I kind of needed to take a step back from the idea of collaboration for a minute."

Part of that process was booking a studio session with legendary producer Steve Albini (Nirvana, Pixies and many others) at his Chicago studio Electrical Audio prior to his passing in May 2024. Working with the eccentric producer, who preferred tape to digital, was another growing experience.

"He had a very calm, patient attentiveness to music that I think is lost," she says. "The main takeaway from him was treating your recording the same way you'd treat your performance in a live setting, being fully present in your music and not having any distractions. And that's kind of what a lot of my solo material touches on in terms of topics: fighting against a lot of chaos.

"Working with him was perfect for me because it was really an alignment with my goals, in terms of why I'm doing my solo project, and what I'm trying to figure out about my internal compass amongst absolute chaos, externally, in terms of the world right now."

The product of that session can be heard in the rager "Clouded World," which may be softer than Code Orange, but is definitely on the more aggressive and chaotic side of the rock spectrum.

There are more "good things" to come from those sessions, she says, first on an EP and then an album next year. Prior to that, she's been prepping at Tech25 in Carrick for her first solo tour, which begins in Philadelphia on Tuesday and hits Preserving in New Kensington on Friday.

"The main thing for me has been getting more life experience in this last couple years, along with writing," she says. "When you're too trapped inside of one thing and that one thing is encompassing your whole life, it closes you off to a lot of human experience. I think this tour is a huge leap for me in terms of commitment to figuring that out. I wanted to finish my songs, I wanted to sing and I wanted to play, and I wanted to be a better musician, to push myself in terms of the way I write, and the zone I'm able to reach."

Meanwhile, in a completely different zone is Marilyn Manson, which she joined as a touring member last summer having met Manson guitarist Tyler Bates while going back and forth between living here and in LA.

"He produced the last couple Manson records," she says, "and he was kind of the catalyst for Manson coming back, so he hit me up, and was like, 'Would you want to jam with us?' And I was like, 'Yeah, sure.' And that's pretty much it. It was really quick. I was like, I'm gonna go with my instinct on this, and make a change and endure with these guys and see how it goes. And it's extremely fun. Everyone treats me really well, and they're respectful, and they are encouraging, and they really want me to be myself."

Of the goth-metal shock-rocker, she says, "He's extremely rad. I mean, I didn't know him before he was sober, so I really couldn't speak on the change from my perspective. But when I met him, he's just a cool [expletive] guy. He has a super good vibe and very punctual and smart. People see the wilder side of it because of, you know, the public views, it's just what it is, but, yeah, just as a person, he's super cool."

About the Code Orange hiatus, which is now about 18 months in, she calls it a "pause" and "a very open-ended thing"

"We were nonstop. It was like, wake up, think about the band until you go to bed. That was my own decision to do. Most kids aren't as driven to do one thing from an early age. There's benefits that come with that. You practice a lot of one thing, and you get really good at it, and that's great, but at the same time, I kind of missed out on some of the funness of other things, of letting go. I had some fun, you know, played sports, but generally speaking, you can imagine starting a band when you're 14, and then still being in that same band with pretty much the same people when you're 30.

"And when you're surrounded by dudes, soaking in masculine energy all the time — and, granted, they were very balanced people and amazing guys — but, still, when you're a woman and you're around men non stop, sometimes you kind of just need a break. Yeah, exactly, and you're Yeah, even as a dude you don't necessarily want to be around dudes all the time."

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Meyers plays Preserving, New Kensington, at 6:30 p.m. Friday with Ninth Cage and Valleyview. Tickets are $32; etix.com.

Marilyn Manson is the Roxian Theatre, McKees Rocks, at 8 p.m. Sept. 20 with Seven Hours After Violet; ticketmaster.com.

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