Out singer-poet lets it rip with metal band
By Larry Nichols
PGN Staff Writer
© 2007 Philadelphia Gay News

OTEP

Shakespeare said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And there are few bands out there who can channel fury like Otep.

The Los Angeles-based group is fronted by out lesbian singer, spoken word performer and lyricist Otep Shamaya, who formed the core of the band with bassist/songwriter “Evil” J. McGuire in 2000. The band’s intense sound quickly earned them a spot at the 2001 Ozzfest, a touring summer metal institution, and later, a record deal with Capitol Records.

The band’s current lineup is rounded out by Aaron Nordstrom on guitar and Brian Wolf on drums.

The year 2001 was a watershed moment for metal in the this country. Nu-metal, which incorporated elements of hip-pop and had risen to critical mainstream popularity on the backs of bands like Rage Against the Machine and Korn, was at the height of its powers. But much like the polar-opposite boy-band craze of the day, the genre quickly wore out its welcome as the press, weary of the cookie-cutter bands that were flooding the scene, started to steer its attention toward the blossoming retro-punk movement.

Otep, while associated with nu-metal, distinguished themselves from the pack by being darker, heavier and more ferocious than most. Their latest effort, “The Ascension,” released on Koch Records, drips with venom thanks to Shamaya’s dark lyrics, which alternate between a seductive ghostly whisper and a blistering guttural roar that could strip the paint off a car.

“There’s an old saying that labels are for soup cans,” Shamaya said about the band’s supposed association with nu-metal. “We’re more of a fusion band. That’s one of the things I wanted to accomplish when I started the band, to invite people that had many different styles and inspirations and wanted to make really aggressive emotional music. That included having inspirations from everything from punk to grunge to hip-hop to metal to spoken word poetry. Perhaps that’s how we avoided it. It was the wrong category for us.”

Today’s popular metal has reverted back to the scare-your-parents days of black clothing, skull-adorned album covers and Metallica/Black Sabbath/Iron Maiden worship. While the sound and aesthetic is closer to Otep’s sound these days, it’s not really a genre with which Otep considers themselves aligned.

“There’s a lot of metal traditionalists out there that don’t consider us metal and that’s fine,” Shamaya said. “I don’t really consider us metal either.”

One noticeable and welcome change in the metal landscape is that there are more bands with female members, as evidenced by bands like Kittie, Arch Enemy, Lacuna Coil and Bleeding Through. Shamaya welcomes the change in demographics.

“I believe that they’re now breaking free of that stereotype that it’s all about gimmick if a woman does something that’s against the dominant paradigm where she’s a minority and the majority is dominated by men,” she said. “I think that people are being judged by their ability to write and perform songs. That’s what we should be judged on.”

With so many women in bands tearing it up in the world of metal, some have banded together for tours. Shamaya said that while it is good that those kinds of tours can exist now, Otep doesn’t feel obligated to be a part of one.

“We did one with Kittie and Crisis once before but it doesn’t seem necessary for me to categorize it like that,” she said. “I would rather work with a bunch of bands that are crazy eccentric people that make really wild music versus just throwing in with a bunch of girls because we share the same biology.”

The band recently wrapped up a tour with Static-X and is currently on the road with Hellyeah. They’ll play in Baltimore and New York City next month.

While there are more women in the metal scene today, openly gay practitioners of metal are few and far between. Shamaya said that being a lesbian hasn’t been much of as issue in her career.

“The fact that I like girls doesn’t seem to have an effect on anything,” she said. “The fact that I find women beautiful doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of our work or our songs. I think it would be more of an issue if I was a guy. One of the biggest stereotypes of people who are interested in same-gender relationships is that [people think] I can’t find men attractive, which is absolutely false. I just don’t have a sexual interest in them. The way our culture views the distinction between a gay man and a gay woman — that would be a bigger issue. I don’t think it really matters in the end. Most people don’t pay attention to the fact that I like girls. Why would they? I’m not trying to convert anyone. I’m not trying to give them ‘the gay.’ I’m just up here writing songs.”

For more information, visit www.otep.com.

Larry Nichols can be reached at larry@epgn.com.