Women in Metal

In the realm of epic/symphonic metal you probably can't throw a stone without hitting an amazing female vocalist. Simone Simons from Epica, Nightwish's Floor Jansen, Sharon den Adel (Within Temptation), and Zora Cock for Blackbrariar are the first that come to mind.

For folk metal there's Eluveitie with two members and Folkstone with I think one.

Very worth mentioning is Alyssa and her harsh vocals, from Arch Enemy.

While she's not been a member in a long while, I have to mention Vibeke Stene as the vocalist from Tristania, maybe my all time favorite.

For all female bands there's Girlschool, and you could say Babymetal, even if they have more members playing with them I don't know how permanent they are.

Others that I know of but haven't really listened much by would be Jinjer and Halestorm.

That's what I can think of off the top of my head, but there's so much more.

Edit: I almost forgot but I have to add: Amy Lee from Evanescence and Cristina Scabbia from Lacuna Coil.

Jinjer is pretty badass. The vocals are top notch in both ends of the spectrum.

Spiritbox

Jinjer

Make Them Suffer

Arch Enemy

Lucrecia

Poppy

Within Temptation

Babymetal

Harper

Those are the ones I listen to, in no particular order

Babymetal comes to mind, but I also want to shout out Sandra Nasić of the Guano Apes for her appearance on Apocalyptica's Path Vol. 2. Also highschool me would kill me if I didn't mention Nightwish. Tarja Turenen was a formative part of my music taste, and 10th man Down, Kinslayer, Dead Gardens, and Creek Mary's Blood all still sit in my favorites list

Jinger band with Tatiana Shmayluk as vocalist is crazy good.

Throwing some support in for Nightwish. They've some good shit.

Some of my favorites are:

Delain (who I'm seeing live tonight!)

Nightwish

Xandria

Epica

Jinjer

Arch Enemy

The Agonist

Crypta

Blackbriar

Cellar Darling

Butcher Babies

Spiritbox

Eleine

In This Moment

Nervosa

Frantic Amber

Within Temptation

Infected Rain

Kittie was a favorite of mine back in high school. Haven't listened in a while but I know what I'm listening to today

Otep and Kittie are awesome.

Delain (Dutch, started as a side project from one of the Within Temptation members)

Flyleaf

Within Temptation (also Dutch)

Amaranthe

Feminazgul and Oathbreaker

Symphonic epic folk metal with female singers is my jams

• Grai - Russian pagan / folk metal
• Folterkammer - Operatic / symphonic black metal
• Draconian - Swedish doom / goth metal
• Messa - Scarlet Doom metal
• Wardruna - Nordic folk metal

Arch Enemy is another one.

Doomsday Machine (https://tidal.com/album/51971329?u) great album.

Closet Witch

Sylvaine

Frayle

Cellar Darling

Tristania

After Forever

Just to name a handful off the top of my head.

Outside of some other bands that other users have already mentioned, one band I'm aware of is a Swedish metal band called All Ends. It's been a while since I've listened to them but I know about them because the lead singer worked with Crush 40 for the final boss theme from Sonic and the Black Knight.

There are some other bands that I'm going to mention but they don't exclusively make metal (or at least I think, I haven't heard all of their music yet). And yes, they are all bands who make remixes of music from the Touhou games, which their is probably more artists I could mention but I have either forgotten them or just haven't listened to them yet.

The Other Flower, I almost forgot about this artist, Karma is great example of their music.

Akatsuki Records, Bloody Devotion is a great example of their music.

Undead Corporation, The Dream Of A Rabbit Singing In The Night is a good example of their music but I know that they do have music that is much "heavier".

Get In The Ring, while the title says it's "rock" despite the fact that it's clearly metal, 祭炎 is a good example of their music.

Sound Holic, because I don't use Spotify anymore, I have forgotten what the best example would be. The song I've been listening to the most that is at least partially metal is Grip & Break down.

A-One, while I know that they are primarily a eurobeat artist, they often mix other genres into their music. An example of a song that mixes metal with eurobeat is God Only knows, which is from Initial D the Arcade (2021).

There is one more that I want to mention but I don't know if the example I have is "heavy" enough to be considered metal or if it's just "orchestral rock". It's 蒼月の懺悔詩～Universal Nemesis by Yonder Voice. They might have heavier but as I stated earlier, I haven't heard all of their music yet.

Oh man, right now it's Spirit Box, the Warning, Castle Rat, Crypta, Lizzies, and of course Unleash the Archers. Eleine can't be forgotten, even though they're not in heavy rotation for me. Kittie is in that same range where their most recent album is just old enough that it's fallen out of heavy rotation for me

If you wanna step to more of a hard rock end of things, Halestorm is awesome.

If you consider Linkin Park in the same category, Emily has been killing it (but any asshat that whines at me about that is just getting blocked because it was a stupid fucking thing to begin with), so they would deserve a mention even though they aren't historically a female fronted band, and folks love to argue about them being metal at all.

Going back, Lita Ford rode the line between hard rock and metal, as did Joan Jett. Both from the Runaways which was the all girl hard rock band. Vixen may have been better barely hard rock, but they deserve more respect than they get.

That's just the stuff that's in my main playlist of harder rock and metal right now. There's a ton of great bands out there that are woman led.

And hell, you can't really talk about that without at least giving a nod to Doro Pesch, and even Wendy O. They stand out among some of the earlier examples

But, right now, there's so many good to great bands that are female led, or even all women. It's an embarrassment of riches.

I discovered Brutus a few weeks ago. Stefanie Mannaerts is the vocalist and plays the drums simultaneously. The power in her voice while smashing the hell out of her drums... incredible. I was blown away when I saw a Video of her performance and realized it. What Have We Done is probably my favorite.

My bits:

Amaranthe

Angtoria

Cinnamon Babe

Dorothy

Nightwish

Venus 5

Singers:

Amanda Somerville (Trillum, Exit Eden, Kiske/Somerville)

Marcela Bovio (Stream of Passion, Mayan, Dark horse/White horse)

Bands:

Kobra and the Lotus - Heavy Rock

Stream of Passion - Progressive Metal

Tardigrade Inferno - Cabaret Metal

Volturian - Symphonic/Pop Metal

Nightwish.

Favorite release: Once (https://tidal.com/album/186100020?u)

If you like Doom Metal you have to listen to Witch Mountain.

Visions Of Atlantis has two singers, male and female, with the female being the lead. I forget their names, and I know a quick google search would tell me, but I'm having trouble balancing this message and the steering wheel, plus this bowl of soup is REALLY hot.

Lots of great bands here already, and some new to me! One of my favorites I haven't seen here is Spiritbox... Courtney Laplante reminds me of Angela Gossow and Tatiana Shmayluk, she has the nice clean vocals as well as the super gutteral growl.

https://youtu.be/vVDXTFeGYwc

I'll just post one since I've not seen it here yet. Sorry If I missed it.

Future Static, Roach Queen is a top song

Such a small woman with a massive voice. I'd never heard of them until I was watching Electric Call Boy in Perth Australia and they were one of the openers.

Gotta mention Spiritbox. Courtney is one of the most celebrated modern metalcore singers.

Within Temptation, Lacuna Coil. Does Blackmore's Night count? Actually, I don't know if any of these technically count as metal. But I like them anyway.

UNLEASH THE ARCHERS. By far my favorite band.

Acid King

Witch Mountain

SubRosa

Bloody Panda

Couch Slut (more hardcore/noise)

Late to the party but my recommendation is Oceans of Slumber

The Breeders kicked fucking ass - Kim Deal went on to form the Pixies but her first project is absolutely worth a listen as well.

Julie Christmas is a personal favorite.

The Battle of Mice records are harrowing (content warning for DV). Made Out of Babies was incredible as well. Same for her work with Cult of Luna. Some really, really unique vocals there.

My personal favorite is the Spylacopa Self Titled record. That album was a great blending of styles and guest artists, but Julie's work stands out.

CASTLE RAT

Number 1 would have to be:

• Triosphere (prog/power?). Ida is utterly amazing.

Some others I didn't see in this thread are:

• Ebony Ark (prog/power)
• To Mera (prog)
• Without Face (prog/goth metal?)
• Mystik (speed)

Wargasm for your limp bizkit nu metal riffs without the rapping. Currently putting out quality too

In This Moment

I used to love them when I was little, then forgot about them for a decade. They've only improved over time.

Stolen Babies is a long time favorite too, I love Dominique Persi

Theatres des Vampires is also fun

The Birthday Massacre of course

Unleash the Archers, many good ones but I really like the album Apex and especially Shadow Guide and The Matriarch

A Sound of Thunder, Queen of hell and A Sound of Thunder might be my favorites but many greats imo

Fuck yeah Crypta. Fernanda has a monstrous stage presence.

Sadly I just read that Jéssica di Falchi (guitar) left the band the other day.

Anna Murphy (ex-Eluveitie, Cellar Darling) is probably my top metal hottie

Cradle of filth

In this moment

Kitty (not so much anymore, was old band)

I’d like to recommend the 2 plasmatics albums; “Coup d’Eta” and “Maggots: the record”.

Maybe not exactly what people are here for but i’d be remiss if I didn’t mention these amazingly heavy albums.

Maria Brink and In This Moment

Arkona - the best folk metal Hulder - great black metal

I’ll be seeing Arkona again in < two weeks!

In addition to the bands already listed I wanted to add:

Burning Witches is an all female Swiss heavy/power metal band. I found them while listening to Dio covers.

Frozen Crown is a female fronted Italian Power Metal band.

Volturian is a female fronted Italian symphonic metal band.

I really like Nao from Maximum the Hormone, a Japanese metal band.

Great drummer, great voice, and she is hilarious. Her banter with Daisuke on their radio show they used to host was god damn hilarious.

There's a ton of great women in metal, I'll drop two.

Mares of Thrace, Calgary AB based sludge/post/hardcore 2 piece, guitarist/vocalist is part of the original lineup, it's heavy and catchy.

I really like Hulder, black metal solo project, some of her early demos are amazing, this version of Into The Crypt of Rays comes to mind, got a wall flag of the art from this in my office.

undead corporation and imperial circus dead decadence

Year of the Cobra! A husband/wife stoner/doom distorted bass/drums duo. They just came out with their 3rd album last month. Surprisingly great for only having two members.

TL/DR: Elena Siegman’s vocals for the Call of Duty: Zombies soundtracks are some of my favorite metal vocals ever.

Not that Call of Duty needs more publicity obviously, but I love the story of how Kevin Sherwood and Elena Siegman got to be the names they are today behind the CoD: Zombies metal soundtrack.

Basically they were both audio engineers working on CoD: World at War and when it was decided (late into crunch time) that Zombies would be a featured bonus mode in the game, the directors wanted to add musical easter eggs into each of the maps, both the one planned for release and the 3 expansions.

Sherwood and Siegman got to work on writing the music and recording vocals respectively, but it wasn’t until they were working on the 3rd song that Sherwood decided they really ought to have some harsh, metal vocals in their metal soundtrack. He asked Siegman how they could manage that and if they would need distortion, and Siegman was like “I’ve never tried harsh vocals before, but I’m game.”

Thus, Beauty of Annihilation was born. Fast forward to later games and Siegman is a fan favorite element of the CoDZ series. My personal favorites are BoA, Coming Home, and Pareidolia

• Calva Louise - Third Class Citizen
• Heriot - Coalescence
• Capra - The Locust Preacher
• Ex People - Dread
• Cassyette - BOOM

Edit - thought of a couple more...

• Black Moth - Blackbirds Fall
• Vodun - Mawu

Oh. Nobody mentioned "Rolo Tomassi" yet! One of my all-time favorites. Saw them live, too. A 1.50m petite lead singer with a voice from Hell. Love them so hard!

Nightwish, Jinjer, Arch Enemy, Battle Beast comes to my mind. Noora Louhimo is quite good singer.

I always liked this Faye Wong song. Not hard enough to be metal, but I think it's still edgy and kind of haunting.

Castrator is an all-women death metal band that fucking rips everything apart. Merlin has a female singer, vocals are so harsh I listened to it for years before knowing it was a woman.

elveitie: the call of the mountains

Adding one more: Battle Beast. Noora Louhimo's voice just remained imprinted in my brain. Can't really pick a favorite release.

Some faves of mine I haven't seen mentioned yet:

• Castrator (all-female band, death metal)
• Nervosa (all-female, thrash)
• Cerebral Bore (brutal death metal, slammy)
• Abnormality (tech death)
• Walls of Jericho (metalcore)

I have nothing additional to add, however, since I am a newbie, I need to know how to save this post so I can listen to all of the artists I have not heard before on this list!

First bands that come to my mind are...

• Asagraum (black metal)
• blackened nocturn slaughtercult (black metal)
• messa (doom metal)

Potestas magicum diaboli. First album from asagraum. I remember listening to it over and over. It felt fresh for me at that time and it aged really well.

Japan has a lot of awesome female metal bands like Nemophila.

Destiny Potato

Dark Castle - Surrender to All Life Beyond Form

Female-fronted stoner/sludge doom.

Saw them open for the almighty YOB back in 2011. Stevie Floyd is a badass.

After my teenage years it's been very rare for me to dig into a band deeply enough to learn anything about their members, so the easiest examples are all going to be women doing clean vocals, which is the one time you can (usually) explicitly tell the difference just by listening. Some of my favorite examples are Liv Kristine's work in Theatre of Tragedy, Tarja-era Nightwish, the first Stolen Babies album, and Sirenia's first two albums along with all of Tristania's discography pre-Rubicon.

I have two examples that immediately come to mind outside clean vocals:

Samantha Escarbe is the guitarist for Virgin Black and my understanding is she essentially splits the songwriting load with Rowan London. The Requiem stuff I still need to give more listens, but I think the first two albums are absolutely spectacular music. In "Museum of Iscariot" she does one of my favorite guitar solos I've ever heard.

Angela Gossow's vocals on Arch Enemy's "Wages of Sin" album are some of the absolute best in metal. I live for that shit. I never really got into anything else Arch Enemy did though.

Daedric.

The coop with Dal Av is amazing!

The drummer from Maximum The Hormone has some awesome vocals. I can't find a clean video for this song, but you can skip to 3m40s to see her sing and drum https://youtu.be/rhCdOXGehSg

Sorry if this doesn't qualify as metal. It's pretty mixed.

• Jinjer
• Ithaca
• The Anchor

Recently, Oceans Of Slumber, great combination of beauty and brutality

I also discoverd a few months back Haydee Irizarry from Aversed and Carnivora, but I can't find any recent stuff with her (at least in metal) which is sad since she seems to be a talented vocalist and musician

But also a good bunch of bands : Jinjer, Kittie, ETHS, Crypta, Stolen Babies, anything with Anneke van Giersbergen

I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot since I only thought about vocalists (Gorod, for example, had a beast of a female drummer on their early albums)

The lead singer can’t sing anymore so they broke up. But Unsun was great.

• Coven
• Girlschool
• Early Bolt Thrower
• Boris
• Corrupted had an incredible female singer some years ago

Just off the top of my head, probably forgot a lot of great bands.

I saw the "Women in Metal" title and thought this would be a thread about women in trade jobs (i.e. metalworking).

Dehydrated

Smoulder is a great trad/doom band with a female vocalist. Savage Master is a really fun trad band with a female vocalist. Castle Rat is a cool new doom band with a female vocalist.

Undead corporation

Maria Brink from In This Moment. Love her voice and the music.

Eths, Entheos, Vintersea, Igorr, Diablo Swing Orchestra

No ones said spiritbox yet

Dissemination

https://youtu.be/k9Ih0C-6BtI

Lita Ford

Can't believe nobody mentioned Nuclear Death. One of the sickest most primitively brutal Death Metal bands. In the same league with Autopsy, in my book. Mental artwork too.

VCTMS

https://youtu.be/rPmT5q8aVWw

Most of the bands I would mention have already been listed by others, but I would suggest Ad Infinitum. I love how fast she switches from a clear, beautiful singing voice to a low growl and back.

I'd recommend Ragana. Excellent black metal duo who happen to be women.

Hmm, I always have a hard time picking favorites, but I've always enjoyed Halestorm! Pretty sure "can u see me in the dark?" has been pinned in the number one spot of my On Repeat playlist on Spotify for a couple of months now... Lzzy's vocals are fantastic in it!

Also, a couple of years ago Alex Reade joined Make Them Suffer, and I've been enjoying their latest album (also called Make Them Suffer), a few of the tracks from that album (Epitaph, Oscillator, Weaponized, and Small Town Syndrome) have also coincidentally been stuck in my On Repeat playlist for a while.

Cloud Rat

hevy

calm

Jinjer.

Stabbing!