The new normal of COVID19 sees me back on Facebook. Not posting, just creeping. Crawling this morning through the feed, I saw this.
Damn. This song actually slaps. Parody metal is some of my favorite shit because the music grinds while the lyrics are inconsequential nonsense. It’s brilliant, but this piece is extra special. The music is called “Rip & Tear” and was produced by Mick Gordon for the DOOM 2016 soundtrack. On its own it’s deeply satisfying as an instrumental metal track because it delivers Doom-Slayer energy, but Linzey Rae‘s vocals take it to another level.
After I watched the video above in which this adorable young woman cheerfully screams and growls through the recipe, I needed to know how the song was made. The contrast between her sweet face and demonic vocals was – to my extreme disappointment in myself – in need of explaining.
Bigotry in the metal scene includes but isn’t limited to misogyny. If a lady metal singer is good at what she does, one thing you can count on is a small cohort of shit-heads presuming her vocals to be processed. Let’s just get this out of the way now by watching Linzey effectively teach her mom – and you! – how to scream in under six minutes.
This girl is too fucking good. What did we do to deserve her? This lesson is The Most Approachable and everything I’ve ever wanted from a metal vocalist teacher. Easily the best screaming tutorial I’ve found after years of searching. What a gift. I had to subscribe.
The second-to-best part is this: Linzey Rae fronts a band called The Anchor, which is based in Denver, Colorado. This was shocking to me because from the years of 2008-2015 I, too, was in a metal band in that city. My experience of the scene at that time saw it saturated by the kinds of toxic filth we now generally identify as alt-right. So I’m surprised a band like The Anchor was able to come up from there and flourish enough to fuck with the soundtrack of a triple-A video game (Linzey was invited to participate in Mick Gordon’s metal choir for DOOM: Eternal, released this month).
I’m happy to realize now that, of course, my experience was very narrow and that I was foolish to assume everybody would end up with the same mileage I had.
This band, in spite of all the scary shit in the world that chases timid people like me off, is coming from a place of true fearlessness; that really fierce warrior stuff also known as open-heartedness and which is rooted in a compassionate commitment to love and inclusion.
“Ultimately, The Anchor creates music to help others find a voice of understanding and simply be themselves. We write music with the objective of providing an uplifting message, while promoting the value of self worth. Knowing firsthand the refuge that music can offer away from life’s struggles, we hope to be a voice of understanding and provide a place that someone can call their home. This is so much more than a band, it is a family.”
That’s a fucking mission statement, and I’ve never seen a band share one that’s quite this inspiring, though I’m sure many more are out there. Spend a few minutes browsing their site and videos and you’ll see this is a band that walks their talk, too.
I can’t speak for everyone I worked with, but I feel that one of the reasons my band didn’t find our highest success was because of an inability to really believe in what we were doing. Or maybe that was just me? The idea that my self-doubt held all of us back is pretty heavy and warrants serious reflection. My biggest limitation was an obsession with the idea that I had to be both a thirst-trap and a virtuoso to deserve the space I was taking up, and I was (and still am) far from being either.
Now, as I approach middle age, bold young artists like Linzey Rae and Reba Meyers (Code Orange) are breaking down those harmful ideas right before my eyes. That’s not to say these aren’t beautiful and extraordinarily talented women; rather that what I’ve seen from them is a complete ignorance (willful or not) of the male gaze. The narrow and restrictive expectations said gaze places on women seemed to me to be the price of admission into the macho world of metal, and I was never confident enough in myself to believe I could innovate a work-around. But these women? They just don’t give a fuck. Doesn’t seem like it ever even crossed their minds. They were always just gonna play metal, and what they looked like while doing it was always totally inconsequential. To me that’s a goddamn revelation of personal empowerment. (I guess this is where I should mention that women in metal who do dress up sexy-like probably feel quite comfortable and empowered in doing so, and that ain’t my business. More power to them.)
Even outside the metal genre or music itself, people can now find role models who don’t fit the traditional molds, and that’s exciting and inspiring as fuck. In her recent Netflix special, “Sweet & Salty”, Fortune Feimster talked about how important representation is because it’s what helped her finally understand her sexuality. As one critic paraphrased it, “She became the representation she wanted to see in the world.” Something unsung heroes are doing every day is making a way where before there was nothing. It takes a lot of courage and creativity to make that happen.
So this has been a rewarding discovery for me. It’s finding a lotus growing out of the muck. Who doesn’t love to see people succeed? Especially when the environment is hostile and the challengers have to swim against a strong current. Just being a woman and/or POC and/or LGBTQ+ is swimming against the current in a lot of situations, especially when you’re highly visible. Being yourself in front of an audience is usually a tremendous act of courage. Sharing with others and showing compassion in a world overrun by scarcity mindsets, vindictive judgments and other toxicity is nothing short of heroic.
I’m probably waxing it up a bit thick here which tells me I’ve run out of talking points, so I’ll just let Linzey Rae have the final word.
BLOG OF RHIANNIMATOR 