DEI Metal Sorry, Not Sorry, Cis Straight White Guys (Even Less Sorry Than Usual)
In which I listen to new songs by bands that are not entirely made up of cis straight white guys and bestow upon the reader my thoughts. You’re welcome.
Artist: Burning Witches
Song: “The Spell of the Skull”
Though they haven’t put out an album that I dig as much as 2020’s Dance With the Devil, I’m a fan of this all-lady-all-the-time band. “The Spell of the Skull” is a good song, apparently their first recorded tune with guitarist Courtney Cox. They’ve had a lot of line-up changes that I haven’t really kept track of. As I write this, they are on tour in the U.S. but no shows anywhere near me. Hopefully someday I’ll catch them live. Anyway, this song is a good introduction to their sound for new listeners and will be comfortably familiar to current fans. They play very traditional heavy metal that’s easy to like even if it isn’t always particularly memorable. If this was a band of all men would I own all of their albums? Probably not. But as my dad used to say, if you want something to exist you have to support it. And more women in metal is never a bad thing.
Artist: Ad Infinitum
Song: “My Halo”
Album: Abyss
I went through, shall we say, a Britney Spears phase in my early 20s. What can I say? I like pop music as much as the next person. It is literally engineered to drill into your head and fire off happy synapses in your brain, after all. Swiss band Ad Infinitum is what I imagine a metal band fronted by Spears (and I do not mean that negatively) would sound like if Spears switched her vocal delivery between pop cleans and metal growls. Except Ad Infinitum is fronted by singer Melissa Bonny who writes their songs and has a good ear for hooks. “My Halo” has the kind of shiny production one might expect from legendary Swiss pop producer Max Martin. Not gonna lie, would love to hear an Ad Infinitum cover of “Oops!…I Did It Again.”
Artist: The Answer Lies in the Black Void
Song: “Mists of Krakatoa”
Man, this band’s name is a little spot-on for these fucked up times, but it’s also quite fitting for the “transcendental doom metal” Martina Horváth and Jason Köhnen create. According to Bandcamp, this song “is an adaptation from a song of the same name by Kohnen’s previous band The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, taken from their 2009 Here Be Dragons album.” I listened to that song, too, and there are a lot of similarities, though this version goes harder. Ethereal vocals by Horváth float over the doom. It’s a nice contrast. I dig Horváth’s voice. It’s pretty without sounding like an opera lady wandered into the wrong band practice, which is how I feel about some bands like Nightwish. “Mists of Krakatoa” is being offered as a free/pay as you like on BandCamp, so go grab it if you’d like.
Artist: Dogma
Song: “Like a Prayer”
Dogma’s whole “sex nuns in corpse paint” aesthetic isn’t at all appealing to me, but I do love the fact that everything about this band seems designed to terrify right-wingers who deserve the fear they’ve chosen to live in. This is a cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” a nearly perfect pop song. Dogma add some churning guitars, but not much else. The video is more interesting than the song itself: A sex nun is in a church with a Black Jesus statue which she makes come to life by cutting her hand and smearing blood on his foot. Tears fall out of his eyes. They start making out. They start fucking on the altar. She puts his crown of thorns on her own head. She chokes him and he dies. The most sus part of the video is that the singer’s lips never move. She just kind of gyrates with a mic against her lips. But I’m pretty sure the rest is 100% biblically accurate.
Artist: Viperwitch
Song: “She Wolves of the Wasteland”
Album: Witch Hunt: Road to Vengeance
Denver’s Viperwitch has a cool trad metal sound that I dig quite a bit. This particular song tells the tale of lady wolves who capture a male wolf and, uh, rape him? Finally a metal song where women are the rapists, amirite? Equality at last! I’m kidding, calm down. Anyway, in the end of the song (spoiler alert!) the male wolf escapes and kills the she-wolf queen. Does that count as a happy ending? I don’t know! We’d have to ask singer and guitarist Danica “Lynx the Huntress” Minor who writes their lyrics. Viperwitch’s sound, and their look, is straight out of the 1980s and it’s wicked awesome.
Artist: Leila Abdul Rauf
Song: “Crimes of the Soul”
Album: Calls from a Seething Edge
This song is sad and scary, thus I nominate it to be the new National Anthem. The beginning lyrics, “Wartime never began/Wartime never did it end” pretty much sums up the state of the world at this current moment and all of our past moments, too! Leila Abdul Rauf was brought to my attention by Syrup Moose Records, an awesome anti-fascist record label. They sent me a recipe for a vegan treat on a tiny square of paper in like 5 pt. font each time I’ve ordered something from them. And each time my wife made the recipe for me. My advice: find someone willing to destroy their eyesight to make you happy. Anyway, genre-wise this song is industrial folk drone doom. And if that’s not a genre, it is now.
Artist: Angel of Mars
Song: “Devlin”
Doom band Angel of Mars is from my neck of the woods near Detroit. I did not know they existed before hearing this song, but they’ve been putting out music since 2020. I bought their self-titled EP on CD and it’s very good! Also they sent me a sticker that glows in the dark and a button along with my order. Righteous. According to Bandcamp, “Devlin was created as a direct result of the intense, internal shadow workings of [band founder and singer] Terri Gould’s journey through spirit.” What does this mean? I do not know. But the song is definitely intense. “Release me, release my will. It no longer serves me,” the song begins. But alas, “There’s a devil in the room.” “Devlin” feels like a leap forward for the band musically and lyrically. Very excited to see what they’ll do next and super stoked to have discovered my neighborhood doom band.
Artist: Daxma
Song: “Fallen”
Album: There Will Come Tomorrow
Daxma describe themselves as an “Oakland based post-rock/doom metal band” and their upcoming EP, “An exploration of what it means to hold onto feelings of hope in the darkest of times.” And who doesn’t need some of that right now? “Fallen” is instrumental, but since two members of the band, including Jessica T, who also plays violin, are listed as “vocals” I went poking around to see if any of their other songs did, indeed, have vocals. From my research I found that vocals in their songs are used rather sparingly and really sound like another instrumental layer rather than something that can be separated from the sound. Messa plus Bell Witch is the closest thing I can compare it to. And I love both of them. Now I love Daxma, too.
Artist: Whispering Void
Song: “Vi Finnes”
Album: At The Sound Of The Heart
When I first heard “Vi Finnes” (which translates to “We Exist”) I thought, “Damn, this sounds an awful lot like Wardruna.” And no wonder, since Lindy-Fay Hella is a vocalist in both bands. According to Bandcamp, “Due to lack of an easy description [Whispering Void] needs to be experienced by each listener individually.” If they can’t describe their music, how can I be expected to do it? So I asked my wife, whose favorite bands are Fleetwood Mac and Simon and Garfunkel, to do it. “How would you describe this?” I asked as the song began. After 10 seconds or so she said, “Easy listening?” After listening for another minute or so she described it as “Kind of churchy, like church music in a minor key. But also Ren festy, like I can imagine my friends at the renaissance fest playing something like this.” Anyway, I’m married to a nerd. And so is she.
Artist: Laudare
Song: “Dies Irae”
Album: Requiem
Cello, guitar, and screaming? Don’t mind if I do. German band Laudare’s previous releases have lyrics in English, but Requiem seems to be fully Latin. While poking around on the internet looking for more information, I found that their website is www.violentpoetry.com. As someone with an MFA in poetry, that definitely piqued my interest. Could be awesome or terrible! Their “About” page reads, “A wistful sound cuts through the air / Sweet cello hum tonight / A scream, a growl, a heart lies bare / The guitar answers bright: / A melody spun from despair.” Kind of pretentious, not gonna lie. But the contrast between Marie-Luise Thurm’s screams and her beautiful clean vocals, as well as those of cellist Almut Voigt, is really fucking good, so I’ll let it slide. Thrum also did the artwork for the album, an intricate depiction of what might be a multi-winged vagina? Not sure, but I’d definitely wear it on a t-shirt.
