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Brutal Divas: Female Metal Singers
By Claire Wang
Don’t be intimidated by the red boxes to the right. Track changes make any edit look exponentially more dramatic than it really is.
Don’t you just love the powerful and amplified sound of metal singers? The thrash metal shouts, the death metal low growls, andor those high-pitched core screams? Alright, maybe this doesn’t fit everyone’s predilection of music, but what if instead of long haired men with goatees screaming, there were women instead in their place? Now I’m not talking about Evanescence or Within Temptation, deemed asor anything deemed Symphonic Metal. That’s just women singing clean vocals with metal components. I’m talking about women who can scream, who sound just like the male singers. These women are in bands that fall under genres such as deathcore and even death metal, women who are going to have mosh pits, circle pits, and amps turned to the max. Don’t even bother underestimating these women; it’s possible that women can sing like men and produce the vulgar masculinity that metal male singers highly boast about.
•Iwrestledabearonce
Genre: Avant-Garde Metal, Grindcore, Deathcore
Lead Vocalist: Krysta Cameron
Prominent band Iwresltedabearonce, from Louisiana is a favored Warped Tour regular known of course for their lead singer and insane music style. It’s actually quite hard to classify Iwrestledabearonce’s genre but they typically dwell on the extreme side of core (punk influenced music). Their music starts out with loud riffsl and breakdowns, and Krysta’s growls, but during the bridge the music fuses with unique components such as electronic, jazz, or synthpop for example. It varies since the band blends many styles together. And Krysta not only growls, she has marvelous clean vocals. It’s impressive because the her style of screaming she does, high deathcore growls, are a challenge to female singers and maintaining voice stamina during performance is exhaustive when you switch between clean and dirty vocals. Be warned, bands like Iwrestledabearonce that fall under grindcore and deathcore are pretty intense; you might get severe headaches from their music. It’s very fast, with weird vocals and expect the unexpected while listening to them. I recommend their EP iwrestledabearonce, and their first album It’s All Happening. Fans of experimental music and metal will enjoy Iwrestledabearonce.
•Arch Enemy
Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Lead Vocalist: Angela Gossow
Swedish band Arch Enemy’s lead singer Angela Gossow is often credited as the best female metal singer in the metal scene. Not only is theredo they have an impressive singer, Arch Enemy has members from prominent compelling bands such as Carnage and Carcass. Angela’s fortified growls are impressive enough to be comparable to otherwith male vocalists. However their music is rather repetitive and modern, with familiar guitar riffs and melodic choruses. Their gGuitar work is typical out of metal bands, not really special or out there. The only highlight of the band is honestly Gossow’s voice. Without Gossow, Arch Enemy would just be an average mild death metal band surrounded by the many Swedish masses of the same genre. So how about checking out their album Doomsday Machine? And Aalso, their earlier work when thewith former lead singer was Johan Liiva is well acclaimed; check out their first album Black Earth with Johan’s vocals. Their death metal isn’t that brutal, but if you haven’t heard your rudimentary thrash such as Metallica or Megadeth it’ll take some time to get accustomed to.
•Kittie
Genre: Heavy Metal
Lead Vocalist: Morgan Lander
Now Kittie is probably one of the most unique bands you’ll find out there. Kittie is an all-female metal band. Yes that’s right, and Kittie is one of the most successful all-female metal bands out there. Morgan Lander has a sweet voice but then as she progresses in her music she evolves to her raw growls. As I said earlier, it’s quite a tough skill to switch between dirty and clean vocals. Her growls are a bit mild though, I prefer her clean vocals over her grows. And Guitarist, Tara McLeod’s solos are quite sick and you don’t see female metal guitarists everyday. Their music consists of catchy riffs and Lander’s clean vocals, but then as it builds up and she starts with her growls. She usually switches between the verses and the choruses. I recommend their album Spit and In the Black.
•Otep
Genre: Alternative Metal
Lead Vocalist: Otep Shamaya
Otep Shamaya has these intense screams and shouts that sound like a female Godzilla. She kind of lacks melody and usually just shouts out lyrics , and sounds like the female Godzilla. but sShe’s sure is a crazy one. Her vocals are rather raw and messy. Otep’s music is a bit idiosyncratic to the metal genre, a lot of unexpected experimental structure in their music. Not weird enough to be Avant-Garde but they’re not your typical metal band. What’s impressive is that Otep is an Ozzfest regular (if you don’t know what Ozzfest is, it’s one of the biggest metal festivals organized by Ozzy Osbourne) and the band got a record deal without a demo! They got a record deal because of their live performances. But some of their music is just weird; their music is the baby of Björk and Cannibal Corpse. Start out with The Ascension and if your appetite isn’t ruined by then, Atavist is great too.
•Joan Jett & The Blackhearts/ The Runaways
Genre: Rock, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal
Lead Vocalist: Joan Jett
Last but not least, Queen of Rock Joan Jett is the brutal diva and one of the best female guitarists of all time. During her involvement in The Runaways, a significant all-female rock band from the 70s, they proved that men didn’t own the stage. However The Runaways weren’t successful in the US and after two months, they broke up. Jett’s major success was her single “I Love Rock ‘N Roll”, and she toured with bands such as Aerosmith and The Police. Though she doesn’t do metal growls, Jett’s shouts, slurs, and sloppy clean vocals are the start of the wave of female metal singers decades after Jett’s stage. However, her instrumentals do have metal components with a little dab of blues incorporated in her intense hard rock style. But it wasn’t only Jett who set the female band image; many other artists in the early 70s and 80s such as Suzi Quatro and Lita Ford (The Runaways lead guitarist) raised the bar for female musicians.
It’s not only men who can rock the stage wWomen can rock, too. Even if people are going to have doubts, nobody will ever stop these women because they strive for success and give their best in what they’re passionate about. It shouldn’t be shocking at all that there are females who can sing metal, or even that there are females in bands. Metal has often been portrayed as a vehicle of masculine expression, but metal also is performed and composed by people who genuinely love what metal is composed of. And it’s not always for the masculinity. It’s people who are ardent and who dare to deviate from conventional music.
Can’t get enough of these divas? Try: Girlschool, In This Moment, Vixen
Your writing has improved greatly, especially your sentence structure and vocabulary. One slight point I’d like to bring up is that although some of the vocabulary fit in terms of meaning, they don’t fit with the tone of the piece (eg. Idiosyncrasy).
-Pictures for the article:
Iwrestledabearonce:
http://www.metalinsider.net/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/iwrestledabearonce.jpg
Arch Enemy:
http://www.hailsandhorns.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/arch_enemy.jpg
Kittie:
http://www.metalsucks.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/kittie_1.jpg
Otep:
http://www.100xr.com/artists/O/Otep/Otep.jpg
Joan Jett:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4002/4291797576_e996179c9d.jpg
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/327044/Joan+Jett+and+the+Blackhearts.jpg
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