Women in metal...where are they?

It’s the 1970’s and metal legends and heavy metal pioneers AC/DC are on stage waiting to play packed stadiums on their first European tour, the crowd is massive, full of both men and women, old and young, then the band walk on stage to huge applause, a group of young men finding fame.

It’s the 1990’s and if metal you think of Metallica and Korn both big names at the height of their careers and in the limelight. In 1998 and 1998 Korn’s albums even gained mainstream success and achieved number 1 on the Billboard 200. Both thought of as defining metal acts of the era, both formed solely of male members.

Skip forward 20 years and it’s the same for Slipknot, Rammstein, Pantera (the list goes on), well-known names even to a non-metal listening mainstream audience. Metal has evolved over the years dramatically and has even broke free of only being known within its own subculture and niche audience, so why with all this drastic change and evolution are their not female filled and fronted bands who’s name are common knowledge to everyone.

So, I ask, where are the women in metal music?

“We need more girls in the scene. But it's not because I am only supporting the female-fronted bands. It's more because music is for everyone, so... Metal, it's pretty much the only genre - because I cannot think of any other else - that is still a little bit conservative when it comes to talk about a female in the band." Cristina Scabbia vocalist of ‘Lacuna Coil’

Lacuna Coil is one example of the very few female fronted/ female involved metal bands to have found success, fame and to have become as well-known as their male counter parts. The Milan band, which features female vocalist Cristina Scabbia, formed in 1994 having since had great success in the world of metal: winning awards for their songs and having had tracks featured on numerous popular video games as well as touring worldwide many times over the last decade.

From singers to guitarists to drummers there is a distinct lack of females within the genre and has been ever since its formation, with most metal bands featuring all male line ups.

As a phenomena this discerning lack of females does not seem to occur as drastically in other music genres as it does in metal, with women having a much larger visible presence in nearly every other music scene.

"It's still, like, 'Oh, its metal. It's weird to have a female in the band.' And, to me, it's really weird. I mean, I've been doing this for almost twenty years, and I never thought of myself as the female element in the band; I always thought of myself as... I'm a singer in the band."

Think about the popular music charts such as the ‘UK Top 40’ or ‘Billboard hot 100’ if we look at this week’s chart for both 3 out of the top ten artists are female, with females dominating the ‘Billboard hot 100’ top five spots. If we then look at the metal music charts, ‘Billboard’s top Hard Rock Albums’ and the ‘Rock and Metal singles chart’ we see that nothing in the top ten singles comes from females and only 1 place is held by women in the album chart. It seems as if talented women are not even being given a chance to achieve, after all, music is not about gender it’s about the talent and there are plenty of talented female metal artists out there.

Women’s rights have come a long way in the last 100 years, women can now vote, are entitled to education, can work in the majority of jobs, so why after all this is it being said women do not have the same chances as men in the metal genre, when a new ground of equality has been laid.

Could it be the audience? There seems to be a common knowledge within the metal scene that most of its followers are male, which for some reason seemingly means to the fans that the artists need to be male, this fan portrays the general viewpoint well:

“More males are into Metal then females. That's the only excuse I can come up with for the lack of female fronted metal bands.”

However this makes very little sense in the way of explaining this phenomenon as the number of female metal fans has increased significantly over the last decade as well as male fans not just necessarily wanting male driven bands.

“Metal has always had an overwhelming majority of men, so the fanbase and musicians are also mostly male, but that is changing slowly. A matter of time I guess, despite some of the dumb cliches metal is still a fairly open community”

The above fan then went onto reference the fact that two male metal singers had recently ‘come out’ and the audience reacted very positively showing a change in audience acceptance to new things and taboos, so why are more female metal artists not appearing and gaining fame if the audience is so open to it?

Overall it does not seem to be the audience and their receptiveness to females that is the problem, there seems to be a level of acceptance within the community that suggest that even most of the male fans would appreciate female artists just as equally as the male.

Another possible answer to the puzzle is looking to the people in charge, not just the artists themselves or the fans, but those such as the record labels, the managers, the event’s organisers and even the journalists who promote the artists, the top of the metal industry is oversaturated with and dominated by males. The fact the genre is male lead from the top down could lead to a sense of bias when hiring the female artists, it is already widely thought that there may be some sort of elitism among the industry officials with their choices keeping female metal artists out of the limelight so far. A study by the ‘Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau’ stated that ‘Male-Dominated Industries Employ 25% or Fewer Women’ meaning that the fact that metal is already a male dominated industry automatically disqualifies women from the chance of a big break as they are up against the odds.

Women of the metal industry are being put in a difficult position if, if they are not being allowed the same opportunities as men e.g. not being given gig slots or festival slots because there is an existing prejudice against females then they are not getting the same chances to progress and gain fame, creating a vicious cycle where female metal artists never get above a certain level.

This general belief that that women cannot do the same as men or produce the same quality or standard of music as the men in metal is a real issue at festivals, with the head of Reading and Leeds stating

“The truth is that there has been a historic lack of opportunity for young women to get into bands, and to be in bands, and I think that’s disappeared now.”

Are there women have to fill a place in metal?

The answer is yes, go on Youtube, Band camp or wherever else you source your music from and there’s an abundance of good quality female based metal, if you search for it. By doing a quick search I’ve already found 15 female metal bands with positive comments and appreciation such as ‘Nightwish’, ‘Within Temptation’ and ‘Arch Enemy’ so why aren’t they big? One thing’s for sure it isn’t because of a lack in the number of quality female artists.

However there is one all-female metal band that is doing quite well for itself having had numerous tracks reach the top five in the charts in the last five years. The band is ‘Baby Metal’, a Japanese metal idol Band which uses its femininity and associated ‘cuteness’ as a gimmick, so while not the most serious or endearing salute to women everywhere they have managed to crack the male oriented world of metal, which begs even more questions as to how as one of the bands main selling points to the audience is that they are females ‘doing’ metal.

While a few changes have occurred in the world of metal such as the positive shift in fan opinion towards female metal artists, the increase in the number of female fans and a beginning to the public acknowledgement and celebration of the women in this genre; through events like the ‘Female Metal Voices Fest Award’ which aims to celebrate and help attendees discover female metal bands, there is still a severe lack of representation and acceptance for women in this genre and Its not okay.

#music #thinkpiece #metal