Femme-Metal Friday: Ann my Guard “Obsidian Tears”

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Since yesterday was Thanksgiving in the U.S., that means the holiday season has officially started. While everyone else is pushing and shoving at the mall for the best Black Friday sales, I am going to take advantage of the long weekend and spend some time catching up on the music that has flown by my radar, but up to now has not been given rightful attention. So yes, the video is several months old, but good music doesn't have a time limit, and neither should discussion of that music.

Several months back, the Hungarian band Ann my Guard was one of these bands. They define themselves as “doll metal, space witch metal, whatever”, which may not be the most detailed description, but it is certainly an interesting one! What exactly does “doll metal” or “space witch metal” sound like, anyway?

Whatever the categorization, the music is good: a little bit of hard rock, some goth, some alternative...it all fits together nicely. The band's vocalist, Anna (clearly where the group gets its namesake) sounds as though she could have fit right into one of those female-fronted alternative bands from the early ’90s.

The music video itself is filmed in black-and-white, and starts with Anna in the middle of a field, dressed in black. Then a quick shot Anna again, this time dressed in white, clutching a bouquet of wilted flowers, laying perfectly still and unblinking, as if dead. Snakes writhe around her bed, and the band is shown playing in a shed or barn of some kind. A new shot of Anna, looking very bad-ass with a pair of scimitars, of which she wears one on each arm, looking like she's about to do serious business with those snakes!

The video sets a frenzied pace throughout, blurred or frantic glimpses of the band, Anna in white, Anna in black, and the snakes symbolically coiling around an apple. There is a rain (or blood?)-streaked mirror that separates Anna in white from Anna in black. It also sounds like she is singing in Hungarian toward the end of the song. I always like when bands from non English-speaking countries sing in their own native language, so that was a bonus I was not expecting!

For more information on Ann my Guard, visit their official Tumblr page.

Special thanks to Costa Miccas of The Metal Syndicate.

Femme-Metal Friday: Blame Zeus “Speechless”

Photo credit: João Fitas

As my musical discoveries take me across Europe, one place I had yet to visit: Portugal, the home of Blame Zeus, the featured band this Friday. With a heavy-hitting, hard-rocking sound, Blame Zeus has all the gritty, raw power of straightforward, classic rock and roll.

Originally forming in 2010, Blame Zeus took a few years to get up and running before breaking out on the Portuguese concert scene. Now with a second album under their belt, Blame Zeus has released a music video and is looking to expand their fanbase beyond Portugal.

In the video for their song “Speechless”, a plainly-dressed woman enters a dressing room where a bunch of scantily-clad, sexy women instantly give off an intimidating vibe. As the “mean girls” laugh and joke around, the plain girl looks through a bunch of skimpy outfits that do not appear to be her style at all! Finally, she finds an unadorned white dress on a hanger and decides to try it on. As she sits at the makeup table and begins her transformation, her confidence grows. Meanwhile, the other dancers are chatting it up onstage, completely unprepared for the unobtrusive little nobody in their midst. Once she hits the stage, she soon starts leading the others in a racy burlesque routine, proving that there is always more to what we see than just outer appearances!

For more information on Blame Zeus, visit their official website.

Femme-Metal Friday: Hail Sagan “Stealing the Crown”

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In case you missed my post yesterday, I am expanding on the Hump Day Hot Ticket feature due to a high volume of reviews. Now I will not only share a video on Wednesday to get you over the Hump Day slump, but now I will add a little extra goodness to your Fridays by featuring some of the best female-fronted metal I can find.

This week, for the first edition of “Femme-Metal Friday”, I bring to you a band I have written about here before: Hail Sagan, another L.A. band that I really enjoy and hope to share more of as time goes on. Consisting of vocalist Sagan Amery, guitarist Nick Quijano (also known as Sci55ors from the band Powerman 5000), and masked bandmates known as “The Nothing”, Hail Sagan brings together the sounds of goth, alternative, electronica, and puts a heavy metal bite into it.

As mentioned before in my review of the band's “Dark Cloud” video, Hail Sagan also uses music as a way to raise awareness for issues that matter to them: Sagan is an outspoken advocate for anti-bullying, and like fellow musicians Lindsay Schoolcraft and Alissa White-Gluz, promotes a healthy vegan lifestyle. The band also plays fundraisers for veterans and mental health awareness. One thing about bands from L.A. that often gets overlooked is that we are a socially conscious town, and even if a band is not openly political in their music, most local musicians can be found supporting one cause or another through their music (even Slayer, the most brutal metal band ever to come out of Huntington Park, has been known to cuddle with rescue cats!). It is something I have always been proud of as a native Southlander, and it is something I find very admirable about Hail Sagan.

For their latest video, “Stealing the Crown”, the band gets more in touch with their dark aesthetic sensibility by giving us imagery of a snowy landscape while we are still in the middle of summer! I once read somewhere that MTV Europe (or some other video music channel from way back when) never aired wintry-themed videos during summer months, and I can see why—seeing all this snow and fog when it is over 100 degrees outside makes me a little wistful for a chilly breeze. Then again, I'm from Southern California, where it never snows, so it has about the same effect in July as it would in January!

The Nothing is dressed all in black, a stark contrast in the white snow, as Sagan moves through the woods in her trademark purple, like a Little Violet Riding Hood! She is carrying a basket, dropping dollar bills along her path (just like Hansel and Gretel, she is leaving her figurative “bread” behind; “bread” being an old slang term for money). She is being followed by some shady characters known as the “Greed Monsters”, who immediately swipe her money no sooner than it hits the ground. Looking dead-eyed and listless, the Greed Monsters catch up to her, taking her basket away and ripping off her hood. The camera shows the torn cloak in the snow, as Sagan flees from them into an icy pool of slush, where she finds the titular crown and claims it for herself. Now wearing the crown on her head, she and the band are all dressed in white, blending in to the frosty backdrop.

For more information on Hail Sagan, visit their official website.

Hump Day Hot Ticket: Meka Nism “Mouth of God”

Band logo

Over the last few weeks, my musical travels have mostly taken me across Europe, so now I am flying a little closer to home once again with a band from the good ol' U.S. of A. Describing themselves as “epic shaman rock”, Orlando, Florida's Meka Nism combines the sounds of nu-metal, progressive rock, with a touch of symphonic flair and art rock showmanship. Fronted by “vocal artist and shaman” Ms. Meka takes the shaman moniker very seriously: her onstage look resembles a tribal shaman, with makeup on her face in harsh, bold lines; her outfit resembling something out of a Mad Max movie, and holding a shamanic wand in one hand, and a microphone in the other. It's a very cool look that complements the powerful musical sound quite well.

Musically, the song “Mouth of God” is about the Kamikuchi—Japanese shaman women through whom the spirits spoke—in other words, acting as a “mouth of God”. From the tribal chanting at the beginning of the song, you get the message very quickly. The video shows the band in a live setting, but you can also see the sort of power that Ms. Meka holds as a frontwoman and how she is able to captivate the audience, which probably makes this quite the fitting song to introduce new listeners to the band, what they're all about, and what you can expect to see from them at a live show. I like their sound a lot; it's quite different from some of the other stuff I have heard on the American femme-metal scene over the last few years. I can't exactly categorize them as one of those bands looking to take the scene back to more traditional heavy metal sounds, and they certainly do not classify as one of the bands looking to expand the symphonic metal scene into American territory. They do have somewhat of a nu-metal or alternative sound, but I feel those labels are so run-of-the-mill and not even close to describing their sound. I guess you will just have to watch the video and decide for yourself. Besides, good music is good music—does it really matter whether you can slap a label on it or not?

For more information on Meka Nism, visit their official website.

Special thanks to Jennifer K. Barry.