Glam Rock vs Feminist Extreme Metal

In the finest tradition of this blog, I only just watched the BBC Singing With The Enemy programme of a couple of weeks ago. The programme is a fairly contrived reality show 'experiment' in which two groups with very different styles attempt to collaborate together and record a song. Episode 4 saw Sleaze/Glam Rockers Lethal Fixx attempt to collaborate with all-girl feminist Death/Doom Metal band Severed Heaven.

What was interesting was partially the existence of Severed Heaven themselves - it's always great to see all-girl Extreme Metal bands (sorry if that sounds patronising but I really mean it) as they're so thin on the ground. But the predictable clashes between the 2 groups showed off the massive distance between two extremes in rock culture. Lethal Fixx try desparately hard to show their commitment to rebellion, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Although the musical snippets suggested they make a fun live band, it's all desparately contrived in a Towers Of London type way. One of the guitarists admitted that Oasis was what made him take up the instrument. The singer had previously been in a Westlife cover band.

In contrast, Severed Heaven took their music incredibly seriously and were committed feminists. One of the band was seen reading Sylvia Plath. They were happy to take early nights and watch telly whilst the other band tried desparately to raise hell (they lived together for a week in the same house - in true reality TV style).  Although they lacked Lethal Fixx's stage presence and were perhaps were trying a bit too hard to be taken seriously (which is understandable given the sexism of the Metal scene) Severed Heaven made me proud to be into Extreme Metal.  Its musical radicalism seemed much more challenging than the old rock cliches, and in a way seriousness is itself a kind of radical pose.

Of course the programme followed the usual reality TV pattern. Initially Severed Heaven were repelled by Lethal Fixx's sexism, but gradually they warmed to each other and came up with a semi-reasonable song.

More on the prog here.

Comments

[Iponly]

You can hear the Severed Heaven / Lethal Fixx track at http://www.severedheaven.co.uk/ without needing realplayer. [Ick, realplayer.] There's also a flyer and a [pretty bad imho] track for a death metal / girl pop band mix episode.

[Graeme]

I listened to a Severed Heaven song on their myspace page and it's not bad! The melodic death thing isn't really to my taste, but they can certainly hold their own. We certainly do need more women involved in metal.