Thanks!

What say you? Drop me an email, I’d really like to talk more.

Her day-to-day work ensemble included:
- muumuu dress (a floor length sack with holes for the arms and head)
- tshirt under the muumuu dress
- socks (matching the tshirt) with jesus sandals
- a scrunchie (also matching the tshirt) in her permed hair or, of course, the banana clip!

Another victim of bad 80’s fashion…or just bad fashion in general.

I am really into Metallica, Chimaira, and Slipknot.

I started off singing and playing in orchestra and all of the classical music stuff. I listened to Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters and fell in love with the genre. Slowly but surely I branched off to listen to pretty damn close to everything that I could get my hands on.

Personally, I don’t “fit” into any classical steryotype. Sure, I’ll buy Tripps and combat boots, but not for show. I buy them not to fit in but to feel comfortable and feel like myself.

Metal to me is just pure emotion. It helps release a side of me that I only dreamed of letting lose. When you are at a concert, it does not matter if you are an IRS agent or a bum. I have met everyone from know-it-alls to druggies. It’s the experience and the music combined that I go for.

At a concert, the energy is undescribable. And when that band you’re really waiting for plays that opening riff…you feel everyone around you react the same way and you let it all out. People screaming, yelling, and I have even seen some cry. It’s almost to the point of overwhelming but awesome at the same time.

Girls and metal hold a very special place in society. Two girls that I really like in metal are Otep Shamaya(Otep) and Angela Gossow(Arch Enemy). They are feminine but can scream like a man. I love the combination of feminity in a masculine dominated genre.

Sincerely,
Alexis

Being a feminist, and an avid metal fan, and having just returned from Wacken, and another extreme metal festival in germany called party san where bolt thrower actually played, it was interesting to note some of the misogynistic vibes I was getting at the festivals.

You’re right, it’s quite possible to be female and brutal, but at the same time it did make me question some of the values inherent in metal.

It would have been great f you had mentioned Otep as well, she’s one of the most brutal females in metal that I’ve come across in a long time, yet she still incoporates things she faces as a woman into songs.

It’s a refreshing change to see a woman’s perspective on a great genre, and a well informed one at that.

My name is Helene Vaillancourt and I live at Montreal (Quebec) in Canada. I’m 29.

I’m a fan of Marilyn Manson (alternative and industrial music) and Cradle of Filth (black and doom metal). I also play guitar and hope to be in a band soon.

What’s funny is that I began to learn violin at the academy when I was 6. Until the high school, the only music I knew was classic music and opera. And then I discovered Marilyn Manson. Wow! Since then it’s half Berlioz, half Manson and Cradle of Filth.

I like metal music because it releases anger and frustration. There’s metal out there for every occasion and every mood. And when I go to a concert, there’s nothing like thrashing and moshing to make me forget that there’s a world outside of the room.

I’m a gothic girl and I don’t like sexual stereotype. I buy the same Tripp clothing than guys with chains, big boots and choker. I like that being dressed like that, it doesn’t matter that I’m a girl, a guy, an American, an European, or whatever,… I’m a gothic person going to a concert of metal music. And there I meet people like me, dressed in black, that only want to have fun and forget the rest of the world.

I think that metal music is a community where we have the opportunity to be who we want to be. Many gothic guys wear female style clothing but it doesn’t matter; what is important is what we share: music, thrash, fun, gothic and black (everything is black ).

Metal music is a great part of my life and it helps me to live in society because it gives me an equilibrium. I know that I have a place in this world and I can be who I really am. It’s my black side that can be expressed there.

I work as a damage insurance broker. It’s a very straight world where marginality is suspicious. Everybody seems to be born in the same mold. So it’s not easy to feel and be different. But gothic is my shield and my mask, in a way it’s like Bruce Wayne dressing in Batman! It’s for that reason that Marilyn Manson always says in concert “Now it’s time to say fuck you to all these people you wanted to in the last year!” Most people going there are introvert and marginal and so need to be together to feel that they aren’t alone. We feel more powerful behind our agressive style surrounded by this music yelling our frustration to the world. Our marginality becomes our strength.

So being a girl is a detail. It’s part of me as my color of eyes. We aren’t so many girls going to metal concerts but we have the same place than the guys in this world.

Regards,

Helene Vaillancourt