Issue 8 2009

You may be a little confused as to why I, as a female, may be writing about metal music. But never fear, you’re not the first and you will not be the last. I have been asked many things such as if I was lost whilst standing in the metal section, or where my boyfriend was. As such I felt it was important to talk about the role and involvement of females in metal, because as it may come as a surprise to some, they do exist in such a male dominated society.
It’s a simple fact that there is no bigger boys club in the world than the metal culture. Most of the performers are men, most of the fans are men, most of the roadies are men, most of the producers are men, you get the idea. But there have always been females in this boys club.
There have been a number of prominent females floating around in the rock scene since the mid 70s, but for the point of this article I’m going to look solely at those you can find in the world of metal. The first females to make a real dent in the metal scene came out of London in 1977, a band called Girlschool. They went through a number of line-up changes but kept to their original idea of an all female metal band. Girlschool went on to support big name bands such as Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper and Deep Purple. Though Girlschool never really achieved a high amount of commercial success they continue to maintain a cult status worldwide.
But this cult status is nothing when compared to that of the undisputed Queen of Metal. In 1983 a blonde haired, leather clad Doro Pesch joined the band Warlock. In 1989 after surviving numerous line-up changes Pesch was the only original member of Warlock remaining and renamed the band Doro. Pesch lead the way for females in metal, refusing to conform to the typical image of a female and proving to her male peers and the male audience that females could rock as hard as the males. Helping Pesch lead the way was Sabina Classen of the band Holy Moses, who in 1981 was one of the first women to use death growls, and is still one of the few females who have managed to make a name for themselves in this way.
Despite these early pioneers, females still struggled to find a foothold in the scene. But in the mid 1990’s a series of bands formed fronted by females that would help to change this. Next time I’ll go into detail about this new wave of female prominence and their influence on this male dominated society.