Women and goth metal

This week we talked in depth about goth metal and the rise of women in heavy metal. Grunge godfather Kurt Cobain once said that "the future of rock belongs to women" (Krenske). Although this is somewhat true, it has not taken full effect yet, especially in heavy metal. Some bands have taken the liberty to include women as their lead vocalists, but they are still being used as objects like in other types of media. For instance, the band Arch Enemy has a women front runner and she is made out to be a sex object, wearing makeup and often posing for album covers in front of the band in provocative poses. However, by her posing in front of the band, it helps prove Cobain's point that women are the future. She is the main part of the band while the rest of the band merely is backup.

This is also true with goth metal vocalists. The music is not all that challenging with the guitarists just playing basic metal riffs while the woman vocalist soars high above. I thought that our classmate made a really good point comparing goth metal to Black Sabbath. In the song Iron Man, Black Sabbath sings along to the same tune as the guitarists during the chorus. In this case, the band and the singer are in unison and on the same page. For other goth metal bands, the singer sings above the rest of the band making her the focal point of the music.

I think it is important for women to enter the heavy metal scene. It adds another dimension to the music and helps the genre transcend into different territories. However, I don't think that you can really call the types of goth metal discussed in class as heavy metal. Just because they play with distorted guitar and sing about dark topics such as witches and trolls doesn't mean that they can be labeled as heavy metal. Their sound is so much cleaner than the true heavy metal bands and it lacks that raw emotion. The singers usually sound like they are classically trained as opposed to the rawness of other heavy metal bands. On top of that, their concerts are very produced as opposed to the authenticity of other heavy metal bands.