D.E.I. Metal: Sorry, Not Sorry, Cis Straight White Guys
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.
Band: Marthe
Album: Further In Evil
This album came out in 2023 so I don’t know why I recently got an email about this. But I did. This one woman band from Italy is described on Bandcamp as, “Antifascist, feminist, misanthropic.” Three of my favorite things! Her vocals are raspy with some clean singing thrown in on some of her other songs. The music is doomy. On Discogs this is categorized as black metal, but on Instagram it’s “Valkyrian Metal.” I don’t really know what that means. Is this metal made for war? Metal as war? Metal made of war? What I’m trying to say is that Marthe will hurt you, but you will like it. On Bandcamp she describes Marthe as “my comfort zone, my therapy, my shadow of loneliness, my book of truths, my mirror, my alter ego. Locking the door and disappearing in darkness recording music alone became something so powerful. I probably never really met myself before that.” While I had this cranked up in my office my mom came over unannounced and was prompted to knock on my office door and ask if I was okay. A pretty great endorsement if you ask me. Take my money.
Band: Morke
Album: Forged in Steel and Love
Morke is Eric Wing. A one-person band, as far as I can tell, with CJ Yacoub helping out on drums. Morke’s bio on Spotify reads, “LGBT Castle Metal from Minnesota. Themed around personal growth, fantasy, triumph, and optimism. Pronounced ‘mor-keh.’” Apparently Morke used to create atmospheric black metal. Having never heard Morke before, or so I thought, I didn’t have an opinion about this new castle metal sound versus the sound of Morke’s previous work, so I went looking and found that Morke has a track on the 2022 Black Metal Rainbows compilation, a “massive compilation of queer, trans, leftist, anarchist and antifascist bands from the global underground” to “raise money for charities helping LGBTQ youth.” Fantastic. I own this comp and have listened to it exactly once. It is 130 songs long. Forged in Steel and Love is meant to evoke “a fantastical realm free from the grasp of the harshness of reality,” according to Bandcamp. “I feel that we all have dealt with more than enough in these past several years, so to weave a sonic tapestry that provides even a semblance of solace to anyone is a cause worth pursuing to me.” A cause worth pursuing, indeed.
Band: Rană
Album: Richtfeuer
German band Rană have members who go only by initials, but according to Encyclopaedia Metallum and photos on the band’s Facebook page, X, their bassist, is female. I couldn’t glean much about them from their Bandcamp page, aside from the fact that they refer to themselves as “Black Metal/Neocrust,” so I went poking around on the internet and found that their song “Our Smouldering Grief” was also included on the Black Metal Rainbows compilation. Nice. Richtfeuer came out in 2023, but apparently Fucking Kill Records just released it on vinyl, which is why it ended up in my inbox (FKR, by the way, warns visitors to its Bandcamp page, “If you are RACIST, SEXIST, HOMOPHOBIC or an ASSHOLE: Fuck off!!!” and now they are my best friend). For me, when it comes to black metal, there needs to be some element of beauty to offset the darkness. Truth be told, there’s a lot of black metal that sounds like a hairdryer being fed into a woodchipper to me. But not Rană! A supporter on Bandcamp described Richtfeuer as “a lovely blend of different types of darkness” and they are correct.
Band: Sicksense
Album: Cross Me Twice
Sicksense’s Vicky Psarakis, AKA Killer V, does clean singing with a lot of range, growls, and raps. Her husband Rob The Ripper (not to be confused with Tim The Ripper, I guess?) raps and growls alongside her. I would be remiss if I did not point out that there’s a lot going on in the cover image for this song on Bandcamp. We’ve got a fancy purple sportz car with the band’s logo on the hood that is being driven by what looks like a teddy bear who appears to be fleeing a Giant Fire Vagina (which is now the name of my band). The write up about the album on their agency’s website reads, “Conjurers of jeweled light and chroma, commanders of shadow and moonbeams, Sicksense create such a thickly immersive atmosphere that it feels as though you can see the album just as much as you can hear it.” To which I say, calm down, PR team. I wouldn’t call myself anti-nü metal, but you also won’t find much nü metal in my music collection. Still, I suspect that this will go over well with fans of the nü.
Band: Eihwar
Album: Viking War Trance
French band Eihwar would like you to imagine that their music comes from “a parallel universe where the Vikings discovered synthesizers and started headbanging.” While there is no real evidence of that in “Völva’s Chant” (not to be confused with “Vulva’s Chant,” a song by my new band Giant Fire Vagina), I did dip into some of their other songs and it makes sense. The band reminds me a lot of Wardruna, a band I actually really love. And, like, there are a lot of neo-folk metal-type bands out there and, honestly, I’ve never really felt the need to delve into any of them as Wardruna scratches that primal itch just fine, thank you. But I’m digging what I’ve heard from Eihwar and plan to listen to the whole album. Whether our relationship will progress further than that remains to be seen, but, hey, a second date is a second date.
Band: ALT BLK ERA
Album: Rave Immortal
ALT BLK ERA are sisters Nyrobi and Chaya Beckett-Messam, which is fitting because this song sounds like something my sister would have listened to in high school. She was an early adopter of bands like Smashing Pumpkins, so much so that when she wore their shirt to school a girl who otherwise was on the cutting edge of things made fun of her. Anyway, “Come On Outside” could be a Breeders single circa 1994. ALT BLK ERA is described as “genre defying” with a “fearless fusion of Metal, Rap, Electronic and Operatic modalities” on their Bandcamp page. There aren’t a lot of artists mixing rap and metal that I really dig. But it turns out I dig it when ALT BLK ERA does it. Two young Black women (and I mean young—Nyrobi is 20 and Chaya is 17) making the music they want to make, and they don’t give a damn if you like it. Actually, they probably do give a damn. Making art that nobody likes sucks. Thankfully, there is a lot to like here.
Artist: Adorior
Album: Bleed on My Teeth
“Be! Aggressive! Be! Be! Aggressive!” Okay, Adorior does not need a cheer squad to remind them to wield their music like a shard of a broken Guinness bottle slashing the listener’s face, but this little cheer popped into my head upon listening to “Begrime Judas” since it is, well, very aggressive. Adorior are blackened death metal? Deathened black metal? On vocals is Jaded Lungs and she sounds pretty pissed! Demonic, even. I was at first confused about the album title, Bleed on My Teeth, wondering if they meant “Blood on My Teeth.” Then I saw the album art and, well, yeah I get it now. The cover art is very intense and not for the faint of heart (two words: demon menstruation).
Band: Vicious Blade
Album: Relentless Force
I saw Vicious Blade, a band I’d never heard of prior, open for Tower, a band I love, in March of 2023. It was the first show I’d ever seen at Outer Limits Lounge in Detroit. I got there super early (because I am a big nerd) and watched Vicious Blade set up. There was something kind of electric in the air, though it could have just been my ever-present anxiety. Anyway, when vocalist Clarissa Badini opened her mouth, a fuse lit and the entire building blew up. Rest in peace all of us. Badini basically made the rest of the band disappear on stage because it’s hard to watch anybody but her. Commanding is putting it mildly. She’s very tiny, but her voice is definitely not. Snarling and angry, if one fucks around with the Vicious Blade they will find out. “Death Blow” is thrashy and terrifying, which is something they do well.
Band: Bad Marilyn
Album: Eye of the Snake
When I first heard of Bad Marilyn I was in Florida visiting my mother-in-law whose name is, you guessed it, Marilyn. We have, shall we say, a complicated relationship. I mean, it’s great now. But it wasn’t for a long time. Anyway, this is a band I checked out based on their name alone. They describe themselves on their Bandcamp page as “a power metal band to remember!” Vocalist Andrea Raffaela has a pleasant voice. Not quite Nightwish, but in that vein. On other songs she has a pretty fierce growl, but not on “We Will Rise,” the latest single from their album which came out earlier this year. It’s fine. Not particularly memorable, but also not something I regret listening to.
Band: Xandria
Album: Universal Tales
First things first: there aren’t a lot of metal band names that start with X. So I congratulate Xandria on their bravery. Looking at Xandria’s website I see that they are playing The Token Lounge in Westland, Michigan with Delain in March. I saw Metal Church play there in 2023. It is a very small venue. And not a particularly fancy one. It’s hard to imagine Xandria’s larger than life symphonic metal—oh, excuse me, I mean their “mystic melancholic rock”—fitting onto that little stage with its stained carpet. “No Time To Live Forever” encapsulates in a song title what it feels like to be alive during these fucked up times. Though I prefer vocals with a bit more grit, Ambre Vourvahis has a very beautiful voice. This song, from vocals to the guitar solo (which reminds me a lot of the solo from Europe’s “The Final Countdown”), is theatrical and flamboyant—which is what one expects from symphonic metal. Cheesy, but not cringey. An accomplishment.
Band: Ripped to Shreds
Album: Sanshi
According to the Ripped to Shreds Bandcamp page, this song is about “obscure funeral rites in Taiwan, wherein exotic dancers perform lithe rituals for living and dead alike.” And who doesn’t want a little exotic party after death? Actually, I cannot tell if the guys from Ripped to Shreds want such a thing as I can’t understand most of the lyrics. Vocals are growly and blast beats are blasting. Admittedly, I’m not a huge fan of blast beats because after a while it just feels like a rivet gun is being deployed repeatedly into my skull. Death metal is not usually my thing, but this sounds like something people who like death metal will dig? This band is “largely inspired by their experiences as Asian-Americans,” according to a Stereogum blurb. Oh, and the album cover art is very cool and done by real artist Guang Yang.
