Ahhh, it’s that time of year again. The now infamous Hottest Chicks in Metal — er, Hard Rock – issue has hit the stands, and legions of people who would otherwise be hard-pressed to remember the last time they even read an issue of Revolver are up in arms over its sexist, dehumanizing, and overall mad weak (Evanescence? Really?) content. In all the uproar, judgements, and debate about womens’ place within the world of heavy metal, though, it seems like a lot of people have forgotten the most important point: the women who are actually out there in the trenches laying down riffs, holding down the low end, wrangling the mic, and hailing Satan. In the interest of steering the conversation back towards the actual music, my next few posts are going to highlight some of the baddest bitches in the game — in doom, in black metal, in death metal, in occult rock, in grind, etc. There are so many crucial female bands and musicians who have made indelible marks upon this genre that it’d take a lot more than the sliver of time your attentions spans allow for me to write about ‘em all, so here are just a few of my favorites. This week, it’s all about the heavy…

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So I’ve been living in the UK for about four months now, and have managed to take in quite a lot of this “culture” thing they’re so fond of over here. I’ve been to nine countries, eight major metal festivals, and a handful of cities in Ol’ Blighty itself; I’ve gate-crashed hotel parties in Norway with the drummer of Swallow the Sun, stage-dived into a sea of muddy grind freaks in the Czech Republic, gotten roaring drunk with Wolves in the Throne Room in the Netherlands, met Gaahl’s boyfriend in France, gotten lost in Rome, watched Electric Wizard blow an amp in Manchester, lost my mind to Eyehategod at Hellfest, seen Manowar (‘nuff said there) – and that was just the first couple months. Between all the metal, mud, bruises, whiskey, calimocho, hard cider, and terrifying Czech liquor (Becherovka and Fernet are no fucking joke, even if it is Kevin Sharp and Danny Herrera pouring you a shot), I realized that, somehow, something was still missing.

To my immense chagrin, I had yet to take that all-too-necessary pilgrimage up through the Black Country and into the Unholy Land itself – to Birmingham, England. Every metaller worth his leather (and several million other music fans besides) knows exactly why this unimpressive, coal-smudged city matters so much. Birmingham is the ancestral home of heavy metal. Everything – whether it be doom, black metal, powerviolence, or even the plague that is deathcore – everything came from here. The famed Mermaid Pub provided a fertile breeding ground for extreme metal, nestled as it was in a dodgy part of town where the cops ignored the punkers and longhairs milling around out front as the early rumblings of a deadly new sound thundered away upstairs The city itself was the original stomping ground of the dirty sexy hard rock’n’roll of Led Zeppelin, the NWOBHM gods in Judas Priest, the crusty proto-grind of Sore Throat, the scummy grindcore forefathers of Napalm Death, the industrial noise terror of Godflesh, and the one and only BLACK FUCKING SABBATH.

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