Women Are Still Shaping Their Place in Heavy Music

Somewhere between post-Mother's Day weekend and the next star frontwoman, we're celebrating women while watching an evolution when it comes to what the roles of women in music look like - and that's a good thing.

Val shares her thoughts on why the Alissa White-Gluz joining Dragonforce news was on absolutely no one's bingo card for 2026 - but should've been. We also dive deeper into why this was a shock at all while citing the history of female evolution in heavy music. 

Get more Val at https://valkleinhans.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I think it's fair to say that the role of women in metal, whether they are musicians, behind the scenes, yada yada yada, it certainly has evolved. It does not look the same way that it did in the 70s and 80s. And our response to it, just as people, as society, you know, the presence of women in metal, the our response to it does not look the same as it did. Thank God. I think that's evolving as well. We're gonna get to the bottom of what does this all look like? What are we dealing with today? And what do we do moving forward? What does the role of women in metal today look like? Let's talk about this vigorously. Now, this everybody kept saying nobody saw this coming, nobody had it on their 2026 bingo cards, and rightfully so. No one imagined that this was possible. And part of what I'm gonna do this episode is talk about why. Because I think there's a few reasons for that. And I also want to talk about the hope that this moment is giving me right now with Elisa. And I don't want to focus the entire episode on her, so we're gonna generally chat about the evolution of what women in metal, both as musicians and behind the scenes, what does that look like? And why is her joining Dragon Force so damn fascinating today? I'm gonna go off the cuff with this one. I want to speak from the heart. I, you know, normally I'm a little bit more prepped, but one, this subject is timely. Two, it's something that I need to speak from the heart on. It's something I need to go off the cuff with. I am a woman. I am passionate about how we're treated, not just in heavy music, but in society. I believe in women's rights, I believe in our right to choose. And I want to be very clear about that, just up front before we get any further. It kind of saddens me when I see progress happening societally, and then we've got a reversion. It sometimes can feel like women's rights, how we treat women, how we talk about women, how we think about women. Right now, it feels like there's a little bit of a reversion in that area. And yet there's one woman standing out right now that's saying, nah, I don't care what else is happening around me, I'm gonna do me. And that is Elisa White Glaz. And I want to give her all of the flowers. I said this in a video that I put out on YouTube on the subject just because I was excited to talk about it. And I'm gonna paraphrase for a minute. But I was especially interested in what happened here because it showed us one, oh, we're looking at what women do or don't do in metal and heavy music differently now. Okay. And secondly, she's the one that's kind of blazing the trail and showing us what this is gonna look like in the future and and and what those capabilities, abilities, gatekeeping, not gatekeeping, all of that, what culturally, all of that is going to look like pretty soon here. Cause like I said, there's a reason that we felt like this caught us by surprise. Musically, it should not have. And if that was the main focus, maybe it wouldn't have been. But we do love, you know, the the the world of Dragon Force, the world behind Elisa White Claws, her fandom, all of the above. Like I understand that they are their own entities, and we can get lost in those entities. But the coming together of the two and the shock, yet pleasant surprise, I am I am seeing mostly positive response to this. I don't, to be honest, I don't know that I have seen, and maybe this is just my algorithm, but I don't know that I've seen anything truly negative about this collaboration. So we'll leave that there. One thing I want to highlight though is that if you were paying attention to the music, you and and paying attention to the words out of the mouth of Herman Lee and Elisa as individuals, you would have saw this coming. Because both are very much in a spirit of can-do. They have a can-do attitude right now, and they are willing to experiment, they are willing to treat the studio like their chemistry lab right now. And if you've been paying attention to both of them, you would have caught that. Definitely musically. Dragon Force, their entire career, has never been afraid to experiment musically. And Alisa is now more recently, more than ever in her career, now these last couple months, she's showing the same thing. So it should not be a shock that these two who have the same mindset right now have come together, but it caught all of us off guard. Why? Here's where I think we need to do a little bit of a history lesson to perhaps try, attempt to answer that question. Let's take it back to the 70s and 80s. Like, if we think about the roles of what women in metal typically were, they were still outsiders, revels, shock figures. Oh, this is a dog and pony show, she's just up there. Blondie, they thought was a joke. Okay. And I know they're not specifically metal bands, but I'm making a point. Women in music might be more accurate. Um, 70s, early 80s, metal was definitely male-dominated, still is, but culturally, visually, even more at that time, it was very male-dominated and very masculine, and very, very, very just alpha. So women who entered the space were questioned. Their motives were questioned, they were framed as the exception rather than the rule. Like, I will let her in because she's good, but this is dude's time, this is dude's space, I want to hang out with other dudes and do dumb shit with my guy friends, and do that in the privacy among other men. Like, even though it's not really private, but you just, I don't know, you feel more secure if you feel like you're with your brethren, and I'm a guy, I want to do dumb shit with other guys, and I want it to be that simple. This is my space for me and my dudes to get out my aggression or do dumb things and do whatever it is I want to do. I respect that. I hear that, I understand that. Corey Taylor explained that very clearly in the documentary Metal Aheadbanger's Journey. So I understand the purpose of respecting that origin. However, does the presence of women ruin that? Does it really? Does it really, or does it add to it? Back in the day, it was seen as a hindrance. Let's talk about Doro Pesh, okay? One of the first globally recognized female metal stars. Because she stayed authentic, we know her name decades later. Lita Ford, let's talk musicality and musical ability. I mean, she could be a guitar hero. She didn't ask for permission to do this, she just did it. Joan Jetta is up there as well. Let's put some respect on her name. Girls School, come on. One of the few first all-female bands accepted in the new wave of British heavy metal movement. And Lemmy, they had to get to me, to me, they started to earn respect. They started to earn some longevity when Lemmy co-signed. And it's unfortunate that it had to go down that way because you shouldn't need that. But I can't ignore that it helped. And thank God for men like Lemmy, who did uh speak up when he could see at least the toxic portions of what was going on. Let's talk Wendy O, Wendy O. Williams, Plasmatics. I mean, good lord. She said, let's do shock. She said, let's do aggression. Let's do it all very theatrically and do it in ways that are typically reserved for men. But let's show them that women can do it too. And let's show them that we want to do it because we want to do it. Period end of discussion. It doesn't have to get any deeper than that. This is just what I want to do, and I want to create a space to do what I want to do. Pretty sure that's actually a plasmatic song. And unfortunately, in these moments, girl school, I think, in that same documentary that I brought up, Metal Headbanger Shirney, it's 20 years old already, but it's from Stan Sam Dunn. And it's still interesting, still holds in some ways. It's it has aged pretty well. And one, I remember the members of Girl School talking about being questioned when they would pull up to a gig. And oh, can she actually play? Are you just tuning the guitar for the guitarist? I'm sorry, what people thought it was a marketing scheme, a PR stunt that Blondie has talked about experiencing that specifically. And then you have the other dudes who I don't know why, but one of the gatekeeping parts in all this, some were saying, Well, is this heavy enough? Is she heavy enough? Can she hang with us, keep momentum with us, and enter this space as it we created it and prove to not be a hindrance whatsoever? Now that's a whole other topic for discussion. But these I'm just expressing were some of the concerns, and that's why we have the questioning that we did at the time. Thank God we have evolved since then, which takes me to the front woman era. Now, okay, 70s and 80s, thank you, women like Lita Ford, thank you, women like Doral Pesh, thank you, women like Girls School, thank you, women like Wendy Hill Williams, thank you, Joan Jett, thank you, Pat Benatar. Okay, thanks to them kicking down some doors and proving consistency, proving musical ability, proving they can hang, thanks to some of them being very good eggs, we earned what I will call the front woman era. By the late 1990s, early 2000s, this is where I come in with my attention to heavy music. And I know a lot of y'all are gonna agree that this is the point when we start to see front woman take front and center, pun intended. They become more visible in heavy metal. And the interesting part that I hit on in the video reacting to the Elisa Whiteclothes news is it seemed to be that even though there's some evolution here, and that's evident because now women are primary, they're front and center, they're being shown front stage, right? Yet there's still only certain categories we'll put them in, there's still only boxes that will allow it, right? There's still only very specific roles that they can have, even in this era, because this is what's happening. We have the gothic siren kind of thing going on. Hello, Amy Lee, evanescence. We have operatic vocals, hello, night wish. Okay, beauty, mystique, the contrast between femininity and heaviness. And while this is important to acknowledge, because thank you, now we have the freedom to express both today without question. I noticed again at that time we still only saw women in very specific instances. Uh Christina Scabia, Lakuna Coil, to me, to me, to me, to me, she is one of the first who was somewhere in between. She reached the average girly who was, you know, I'm not quite fully goth. I might not even totally be into a goth aesthetic. I but I do want to enjoy heavy music. And I I want to do this without being, you know, uh pigeonholed to symphonic operatic vocals. Yes, she is capable of doing those and has proven so in her decades-long career with Lacuna Coil, particularly the early years. Um, she doesn't have to stay in the let me be the whimsical symphonic voice soaring over everybody else. No, no, no, no, no. Christina is countering everything else that is going on in Lakuna Coil, directly interacting with it. Um, Andrea and her taking turns on Lakuna Coil, I mean, that that sparked some wheels into, you know, and turned honestly heavy music into partially what we see today. Like now we're starting to see very specific boxes, is what I'm getting at at that time. And this visibility mattered enormously because it normalized women as leaders in heavy music. Yes, in pretty strict and rigid capacities, but we're here. And the the positives have got to be acknowledged. They're accepted more readily, women are accepted more readily as singers than purely instrumentalists. You don't necessarily have to be one or the other. Downside though, beauty became kind of tied to marketability. It's gonna happen when women are involved, I get it. But okay, this is also the same time we start seeing this. And then women, particularly in more extreme metal cases, they're still facing a little bit more resistance because it takes the average listener a little bit more getting used to to enjoy something like what they are doing, like a woman screaming, growling, drumming blast beats, riffing technically. That was still treated as a little bit unusual, even into the 2010s. Let's come correct on that. Here's some people who changed this, and this is where she needs her flowers. Thank you, Angela Gasso, for introducing us. But Angela was one of the first, let's come correct. Angela Gasso, Arch Enemy, and then of course later, Elisa White Gloves. That band alone, Arch Enemy, did so much for showing women a little bit later on. Like, oh, okay. I really, really don't have to stay within specific boundaries. I really can kind of emulate the boys if I want to. And in some instances, arguably do better. And it's not a crime. I have the freedom to do this. And you know, if you like it, you like it, great. If you don't, you don't. Then we have further support. Tati and Ginger, Courtney from Spirit Box. Now this is becoming the norm, particularly in the more extreme side of heavy music. This helped dismantle the idea that aggression, harsh vocals, or technical heaviness were inherently masculine, not anymore. So this was a bonus. These instances were huge wins. And Elisa's directly part of this, which now I'm gonna I'm gonna call back, okay, to what I said earlier. I don't think that Elisa Whitlaws joining Dragon Four should have been as shocking as it was, but I think we missed it because some of us might still be a little bit stuck in the whole, hmm, I don't know if this is where a woman belongs. I think some of us might still be stuck there, and I'm gonna go even more specific and suggest that it's possible. Some of us haven't seen a woman change bands, so to speak, or or be part of multiple bands too too often. And Elisa might arguably be the biggest, if if not one of the biggest for sure, names when it comes to women and heaven music to do this. She was highly recognized in Arch Enemy, okay? Took the torch from Angela, carried it very well for Arch Enemy for you know, up until recently. And that's fine, that's cool, but now she's jumping from legacy band to legacy band, arch enemy to Dragon Force. They have legacy status right now, they've got sustainability and consistency, they've got decades built of it right now. And I think this might be one of the first instances where we see a woman doing that, or at least a woman of her caliber and a woman of her status in heavy music do this. This might be one of the first instances, but here's the positive. Like I said, overall, this was very, very, very, very well received. It was very well received. I have not seen a lot of feedback about this decision. There's a broader emotional evolution happening in heavy music right now. We're paying attention to emotion, I think as we should. Metal increasingly allows space for introspection and vulnerability and aesthetics and mental health conversations and identity exploration and emotional nuance. And these are areas where women artists have often helped normalize the genre, thank God. So the inclusion has been nothing but a benefit, in my opinion. And I think that influence is just it's bigger than just representation. It changed what heavy can mean. And it's so fun to see that we're still changing what we think of when we think women and heavy music and what that looks like in our heads. We're changing what rules apply or don't apply to them. What I bet Elisa White Glaws just woke up and said, What glass am I gonna shatter today? What what glass am I gonna shatter today? Let's go. What what you know what glass ceiling is coming down today? I applaud her for this decision, not just because it makes sense musically, but because it advances what what we think of when it comes to the roles of women in heavy music. And I don't want to talk only about the artists here. It has been a pleasant surprise to see women in music play enormous roles behind the scenes too, and and really take on the invisible labor, is what I'll call it. The stuff we don't always see. I'm talking about the publicists, I'm talking about the managers, I'm talking about the booking agents, the photographers, the journalists, the editors, the radio hosts, the content creators, the community builders. The hey, I've got my platform, let me share it with you. Let's do this thing together. A lot of modern metal culture, a lot of music is DIY today. So we need erbuddy. And I'm not saying that there wasn't, you know, it more so in heavy music and hip hop, I think, than others, but like when it comes to these cultures, it started as DIY, it's still DIY, and it just looks differently. And shout out to everyone! Everybody who is still contributing and still carrying on. A lot of metal culture, especially online, is sustained by female labor. Even if the public-facing image of metal does skew basculine, I think that it somewhat still does. However, I'm not gonna say it does totally anymore. Not in the same way that it might have in the 70s and 80s. We are more than welcoming to females in this space. More welcoming than we ever have been, is my argument. So this is especially true in any type of alternative media. I mentioned hip hop, I'm mentioning heavy music, podcasting, hello, social content, fan communities, you know, the the cheerleaders, they're still here. I'm not I'm not saying groupies, I'm saying, you know, street teams, which are now social media teams, that type of thing. Like they're the ones running the fan sites, the fan reddits, things like that. I mean, they're running the substacks if they're more print, you know. It it's shout out to them. Shout out to them. They're doing merch design, graphic design, if that's their expertise, festival documentation. Hey, photographers, how are you? We love what you do too because you're part of the reason we get to see a lot of this. Videographers, shout out to you as well. There has been a major shift from women merely participating in scenes to actively curating and shaping them. We have a little bit more of a voice, which may, may be why we see Hailstorm, Spirit Box today. We see Alisa making the career moves that she's been making over the last few months. Well, another woman kicked the door down at some point. It they might not have, you know, had exactly the same journey, but somewhere somebody did it first. Other women said, Yeah, I like that. Showed the boys who might have a little more control in a few different ways, and proved to them that, hmm, this is valuable monetarily, uh, attention, you know, in those capacities, and made them sit back and say, we can't ignore this anymore. So, shout out to all of you keeping going because it is exhausting. It is exhausting to wait for that recognition and to wait for your day to come. And you know what? We said, let's make our day. So I am thrilled to see this, and I am thrilled to see where we go. I think women are, yes, expected to be authentic, but also marketable and you know, respected if they're technical, criticized if they're too polished. There's still some stuff that we there's still some stuff that we have to work on, you know, praise for confidence, but criticized, punished for ego. Some of that going on, okay. I know that metal pride, particularly metal and hip hop, they pride themselves on rebellion, but it still can reproduce traditional gender expectations underneath if we keep doing that. So there's still things to work on. There's still things to work on. Women are still, you know, asked about appearance. Women uh sometimes are accused of clout chasing emotional expression is still sometimes interpreted differently when it comes from a woman, you know, versus if it were to come from a man. There's still things to work on. I'm not saying that it's perfect, that's not my argument here, but I am happy to see that where we're at now is women can be architects of scenes, women can be label founders, women can be tastemakers, women can be critics, women can be educators, women can encourage genre hybrids, women can be technical musicians, women can be cultural commentators. Hello, hey. I I could I have done this if I had done it 20 years ago in very limited capacities, I recognize that. So let's see where this goes. I I like to see uh to me as I get older, I feel like I physically see more women present in heavy metal. I don't know what our roles are gonna look like next, but I will say I think we're gonna see an even more 50-50 say. Men and women. I think we're gonna see a more of a 50-50 say in these spaces that at their origin were male-dominated. And I'm here for it. What do you think that the role of women in metal and what it looks like, whether it's like I said, whether it's behind the scenes or on stage, what is that gonna look like? What do you think? I it's hard for me to imagine where else it could go from here because I'm so used to seeing limits and I'm so grateful for the possibilities that we're seeing now. I'm grateful for the evolution. I recognize and respect the evolution. So to me, I sit back sometimes and go, well, where else can it go from here? It's pretty good now. I don't know. Can it get better? Can it? And if it does, what does it look like? Well, now that I asked myself that question out loud and actually take a second and think about it, I think it would be nice if the way we treated female artists was the same as we would treat a male artist, you know. Are we gonna give them the same criticisms just because they're a woman? I mean, I would hope so. Particularly if we're talking about anything technical and factual. Are we going to respect that a woman can act out in the same way that a man can? If she's having a bad day and has a bad interaction, is that gonna blow up the same way? I would hope it should not. I would hope that it would just be treated as, well, if you're being a dick, you're being a dick. But I that's what I hope. And maybe if I really think about it, where I see that we need some, not just improvement, but where I could see us headed next if we continue to encourage the positives of what we've seen. But again, I ask, what does this look like for you? Where do we see these roles? What what doors are going to be open five, 10, 15 years down the line? And can we do better? What does progress look like? What does, if you're if you're a woman listening to this, what does that better look like for you? What is it that you want to see? Tell me. Let's talk about this in the comments. I do really want to encourage this conversation. So wherever you find this, wherever you see this, wherever you're listening to this, let's keep it going. Thanks so much for joining me for another week. Thank you for listening to me air some theories out loud this week because I know this wasn't super, super tight and super, super prepared. Most it really was me uh talking off the cuff, except for like a handful of talking points in general, like 10. This is still me going off the cuff. So I hope this was alright. I hope that you don't mind that the conversation was a little bit more flexible in that manner this week. But I do want to encourage conversation, and I can't do that if I don't do it using my own thoughts, my own opinions, a little less structure, sharing that authentically. Yes, I always share my own opinions. Yes, I always share my own thoughts, but sometimes when you structure it so much in a full-blown outline, it can become a little bit too polished. And too polished to me is a room where you have to stay polished. I don't know that we want that for a subject like this. So you let me know what you think. Agree with me, don't agree with me, what does the future look like? I want to have those types of conversations. So you let me know, and we will see you again next week. Thank you so much for joining me again. Bye.