There has always been something witchy about black metal. The black metal persona, long-haired, uglified with corpsepaint, and shrieking in the forest, certainly carries something of the witch about it. And yet, as Jenny Hval explores in her essay-novel Girls Against God, black metal has traditionally been a male-dominated domain, reproducing patriarchal power from within even as it violently pushes against the modern world.
It is high time for a feminist reclamation of the genre, and Norwegian trio Witch Club Satan could hardly have come along at a better moment, just as the black metal scene more broadly opens itself to a wider range of feminist, queer, trans, and antifascist perspectives. There have always been women in black metal, from Opera IX and Astarte to Myrkur and Hulder, but Witch Club Satan are explicitly feminist and political about it.
At 8pm, Fairmount Theatre is still fairly empty, and for a minute I wonder if that is because everyone is at Prepare the Ground in Toronto. By the end of Penelope Trappes’ set, though, the venue has filled up considerably. Born in Australia and based in the UK, Trappes makes music that is dark and operatic, and she cuts a mysterious figure in the gloom, wielding a light and guitar alternately, her voice projecting over swathes of shadowy electronica.
My first point of reference is Björk, for the abstract crooning, but Trappes’ futuristic, cinematic architectures of sound also recall artists such as Lingua Ignota, Diamanda Galás, Chelsea Wolfe, Rosalía’s recent album LUX, and even Enya in places, where the witchy chanting becomes more churchy, angelic, and akin to a kind of deconstructed folk. Her best song tonight is Red Dove, with its swirling arpeggios, as close as her performance gets to being danceable. “Thank you, welcome to the coven; soon they will be here,” Trappes says in closing, raising the sense of anticipation in the room.
Witch Club Satan’s set begins in perfectly eerie and meditative style. Dressed in strange white costumes with horns and bare breasts, and bathed in blue light, the trio perform Mother Sea, a haunting, mellow number built around a spoken word track narrating the tragic execution story of a “water girl” who “pretended to be a mermaid.” Its aquatic-themed sung lyrics, including “circles in the water,” brilliantly set the mood and ritualistic tone. Black metal needs to be a ritual. It had become too comfortable turning itself into rock music.
The trio, with Hedda replacing Victoria Røising, who recently gave birth, then return to the stage practically naked except for some strategically placed long black wigs. They proceed through the most classically black metal part of their set, recalling the likes of Immortal and Darkthrone at their best, replete with all the right gurning and shrieking turned up to eleven, including from drummer Johanna Holt Kleive.
Then comes a pause, and guitarist/vocalist Nikoline Spjelkavik intones with otherworldly seriousness: “Silence is a fucking crime: you know that there is no mercy for genocide, right? And you know that there is no mercy for Benjamin Netanyahu? Black metal ist krig: war against war!” before lurching into Black Metal Ist Krig. At the end of this section, Hedda plays her bass with a bow, and Kleive leaves her drum kit and comes to the front of the stage for a powerful a cappella performance of Mother, its melodic vocals bringing to mind metal’s 1970s occult origins.
Then comes a flamboyant costume change. Returning to the stage in futuristic masks, with a blonde wig for Hedda and sparkly, glammy outfits all round, this section of the set culminates with the pounding electro-industrial number Witch Techno, and Spjelkavik throwing herself into the audience to crowdsurf enthusiastically.
Encompassing the history, present, and future of heavy music with wild creativity and passionate anger, it occurs to me that Witch Club Satan’s live show is miles ahead of their recorded output, which bodes well for whatever comes next. Then, too soon, it is all over. The lights go up, and the corpsepainted punters file out. Come back soon. This was awesome.
Review – Daniel Lukes
Photos (from their Toronto show) – Steve Gerrard
