What I've Been Listening to Lately, Part 2

Jul 13

3 min read

Hello. I've been a terrible, terrible blogger lately. I could offer a few excuses—my grandmother died in March, I'm working on a master's degree, I'm tired—but who cares. Moving forward, I plan to post once a month, but you have no reason to trust that!

Anyway, I'm still obsessively checking Spotify for new-to-me music, and I've found several more lady-led bands I'd like to share with you all:

Blackwater Holylight

I would describe this band as doom metal with a shoegaze twist. Heavy riffs crashing down on you and breaking into ethereal, dreamy soundscapes. Actually, that's called doomgaze according to the googling I just did. That's a real genre, who knew?

Blackwater Holylight is all about duality: empowerment and vulnerability, rage and sorrow, light and dark, heavy and airy. Not every song is a hit to me, and sometimes the pounding riffs are just a bit too repetitive, going on a bit too long. But that's kind of the nature of this genre, one I don't listen to super often. Their standout songs for me are "Heavy, Why?", "Willow", "Fate Is Forward", and "Moonlit".

Just a group of girlies killing it out here, all of whom I would take on a date to the St. Louis Zoo. We could look at the penguins and hold hands and talk about death.

Castle Rat

Castle Rat is so fun. Their vibe is like if your D&D group was actually sexy and cool. I mean look at them:

Medieval fantasy heavy metal. Are you sold yet? They even have fun names like the Rat Queen, the Count, and the Plague Doctor. Their videos bring that campy 80s vibe, and you feel like you're watching friends LARPing in the woods behind someone's mom's house. In this landscape of modern music where everything starts to sound and look the same, Castle Rat brings some much-needed creativity and joy.

My favorite songs: "Siren", "Dagger Dragger", and "Feed the Dream".

The Maxines

Grunge, metal, punk. The percentage of each changes song to song, but it's always angry and hurt. Gritty and moody, every note is held up by a divine feminine rage, a refusal to be quiet and behave.

The Maxines are relatively unknown, topping 25,000 listeners on their most popular song "Cannibal", which surprises me. I'm hoping they blow up soon. Their latest album This Is What Happens is particularly sharp and venomous. Standouts from it include "Sink My Teeth In", "Bleeding Linoleum", and "Starve". From their 2023 album Skin Tight, I especially enjoyed "Letter To A Pill", "Nothing and Everything", and "Slumber".

Lucifer

Lucifer pays homage to 70s heavy metal pioneers like Black Sabbath, Pentagram, and Steppenwolf, but with a twist of Heart and Fleetwood Mac sometimes thrown in for a little pop hook. Lead singer Johanna Platow keeps her voice low and ominous, each song feeling like a dark prophecy you can headbang and/or dance to.

Doesn't she look like she could be a vampire temptress in a 70s B movie?

This band, a revolving door of talented musicians with Platow as the one constant piece, nails the gloom and doom of the early Black Sabbath era while still putting their own spin on each song. More melody, more hook. Start with "Dreamer", "Crucifix (I Burn for You)", "Midnight Phantom", and "At the Mortuary".

My Ruin

Not everything My Ruin does resonates with me, I'll admit. But when it hits, it hits. They've covered a lot of ground in terms of genre; their first album Speak and Destroy was a metal/spoken word/industrial experiment. From there, they've done more straightforward metal/punk. The band is 100% DIY—no fancy production, no suits. You can hear it in each album, the rough cuts, the grit, the fuzziness. Sometimes it's distracting, most of the time it works in the song's favor. Either way, it's a unique experience listening to My Ruin.

Singer Tairrie B growls, screams, shrieks, raps, and, sometimes, recites like a poet. Her creativity shines in every song, most of which touch on the hurt, anger, and otherness that underlie womanhood. But don't get it twisted: she's not complaining. She's reclaiming, asserting, and empowering. My favorite songs are "Terror", "Beauty Fiend", "Silverlake", and "Vince Vaughn" (yes, that's the name of one of their songs).

I hope you check these ladies out. They each have something distinctive to offer if you love rock as much as I do!