By Kristin Otts

As an aging millennial (she says, as she adjusts her bifocals), my journey as a metalhead began in secret. A certified "good girl" and honor roll student, my musical tastes were limited to what I could scrounge from our youth group's CD library. I brought home all the pre-approved classics: Amy Grant, Rebecca St. James, Steven Curtis Chapman. But sometimes - sometimes - I managed to slip in an outlier like P.O.D. or Skillet, and my bedroom became my mosh pit while I head-banged and lip-synced to lyrics that hovered on the cusp of being too religious to be rebellious.  I took what I could get; and my mother, an avid concert-goer during the era of Stryper, didn't really object or interrupt.

But once I’d tasted the harder stuff, diet Christian rock wouldn’t do anymore. I shared earbuds with friends at school, soaking in the dulcet tones of Nickelback, Buckcherry, Korn, Three Days Grace - all the best and worst that early aughts nu-metal / rock had to offer. 

Say Goodbye to the Good Girl Persona

Listen: I won’t pretend I had some teenage dirtbag moment worthy of a Euphoria season. I also won’t validate the prejudices of all those church ladies who swore my musical tastes would lead me down a heathen path. But at 18, I’ll admit that I caved to the cliches a little bit. 

Because the good girl persona started feeling like a lie. The life laid out for me itched like a secondhand sweater. So I made one insane, cliche, teenage dirtbag decision. 

I bailed on my parents’ approved and already-funded east coast college, and instead enrolled at CSU’s satellite campus in Pueblo, Colorado - a steel town that hadn’t seen economic growth since the 70s. While the aforementioned east coast school was not exactly Ivy League, it was prestigious enough that everyone assumed it would provide me Opportunities, with a capital O. On the other hand, Pueblo was and remains a small city with big grievances, great food… and a thriving punk and metal scene.  

In the wake of this decision, I found myself scraping to survive the life I’d chosen. I worked a couple jobs. I ate as little as possible. I relied on the kindness of friends and boyfriends and acquaintances who let me borrow their car, snack on their leftovers, steal their wifi.

And I went to concerts. Because most of them were cheap, with a $2 or $5 cover charge; and if you knew someone, maybe the bouncer would let you in for free. 

I met R through work, but I kept meeting him at those concerts. He and his cousins, as many cousins are wont to do, started a metal band in their garage. Their first shows were in basements, dive bars, and occasionally, gloriously, at Phil’s Radiator - a mechanic shop that reincarnated as the world’s greatest and shittiest venue. (RIP, Phil’s. I spilled so many drinks on your sticky concrete floor.)

R and I started sort-of dating; and as girls are wont to do, I wrapped my entire personality around this role as a musician’s sort-of girlfriend. I groupied, hard. I moshed in terrible clubs, tried my hand at my smudgy rocker makeup, and crashed on nasty couches at house parties. 

When we broke up, I ditched the rocker makeup. But I had a hard time ditching the music. All of it reminded me of him, which infused every drum solo and guitar riff with pain. Honestly, though - the pain was the point. 

Painful Reminders

I hung onto those bands through my grieving period and into my marriage to a wonderful man who, coincidentally, is another musician. (Dear reader: it was not a coincidence. I have a type.) I hung onto them through the birth of my daughter and the black hole of PPD, when no other songs could manage the shipwreck I’d become.

In 2017, I got the news that R had died by suicide. And I submerged myself again in all the music he and I had listened to together. It was both a comfort for myself and homage to him.

Nothing else could properly contextualize the tragic death of a long-ago love. Nothing else could contain the guilt, grief, rage, shame, and resentment that comes from that kind of terrible bombshell.

Screamo, post-grunge, metalcore - these genres understand heartache. Everyone talks about metal like it’s built on rage; but anyone who knows metal can tell you that’s bullshit. 

Punk is rage.

Metal is yearning. 

Metal is the modern day equivalent of Lord Byron’s angst-ridden poems about death and lost love. Hozier is everyone’s favorite fae heartbreaker; but it’s hard to compare lyrical songwriting to the catharsis that comes from Metallica’s “Fade to Black.” 

And I’ll be honest (she says, leaning back in her Lazy Boy with a worldly sigh): I think metal lost some of its edge around 2010. These days, metal is both niche and ubiquitous. Like hip hop, the genre of rock / metal has gotten stirred into so many Top 40 pop songs that this style of music feels more like an ingredient than a genre unto itself. 

Metal has been waiting for its Kendrick Lamar: an artist who can marry the nostalgia of the past and the possibility of the future in a way that makes headlines. 

Which is why it’s ironic that the groundswell of excitement around the UK band Sleep Token didn’t start with critics or concerts. It started with TikTok.

You're not really a metal unless someone is googling "is Sleep Token demonic?" 

Most writers I know have at least one emotional support playlist. Of course, there are a handful of weirdos who swear they create in complete silence, typing their great American novel on a vintage Remington; but those people are probably full of shit.

In 2021, I was in between drafts of my first adult novel, and therefore in between playlists: a miserable no-man’s land of musical static. This feeling was worsened by the fact that I started this novel in the wake of R’s death - my own way of processing the churn of mixed emotions.

And my sister sent me a song. “Have you heard of these guys?” she asked.

I hadn’t, because I live in the land of my playlists. When I discover new artists, it’s done grudgingly, by accident. 

"Poetry, Religious Images, Kind of Ballad-y": What Genre is Sleep Token?

The song was “Take Me Back to Eden,” by Sleep Token, and my sister seemed confident I’d like this artist. She described their sound in nebulous terms, with words like “poetry” and “lots of religious images,” and “kind of ballad-y, but not?” 

I listened to the song, because that’s the contract we entered into as sisters. But I kept listening long after the obligation had passed. 

Almost without conscious thought, Sleep Token worked themselves into my writing routine. I absorbed them, launching into my own words by way of theirs. While floundering through a story about grief and death and love, I found a foothold through lyrics like “when the mouth of infinity buries its teeth in me / I’ll smile through the agony for you…” 

And I realized I wasn’t alone. The songs that had been cycling through my headphones on repeat were suddenly cropping up on social media - the soundtrack for book reviews, thirsty fan art, authors pitching their books. Overnight, the Venn diagram of readers, writers, and metalheads became a circle. If you don’t believe me, search "dark romance" on Tiktok. Tell me how many videos you have to scroll past before you find some starry-eyed girl reviewing Fourth Wing while “Chokehold” plays in the background. 

The Appeal of Sleep Token Members

There are plenty of aging millennials like myself who mourn the way that social media has tainted metal as a genre. On the surface, they’re frustrated to see the music they consumed in dark basements and shitty clubs reduced to fan trailers on Instagram. On a deeper level, I think there’s a healthy dollop of misogynism in their disdain. Regardless, I think it’s bullshit. Because despite the force behind the recent rise in metal and alternative artists, one thing is pretty undeniable: it’s fucking good. Even the bro-est of bros can’t deny that the appeal goes beyond Sleep Token’s theatricality or Arankai’s unapologetic thirst traps.

It’s the yearning. You can throw a drum solo and electric guitar into any song, any time. You can put a mask and a robe on any musician and pretend he’s the acolyte of an eldritch god. But the thing that distinguished turn-of-the-millennium metal from other genres was the raw emotion and poetry - the quintessential, intangible thing that made metal stick to my soul for all these years. It’s back. 

And anyone who grumbles about the resurgence of hardcore music because it’s too commercial, too feminine, too fill-in-the-blank… Rock on, bro. Go back to your shitty club. Call me if you need help with your eyeliner.

----------------------------

Kristin Otts is an author, business owner, and mom living in the Pacific Northwest. She co-owns and operates a marketing agency alongside her husband, while simultaneously wrangling their three chaos goblins and a neurotic mutt named Scout. Follow her on Instagram.