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Interview with Otep Shamaya

At an old Hell’s Angels bar on the industrial edge of San Francisco, heavy metal band OTEP takes the stage in front of a chanting crowd. Leader Otep Shamaya returns the fans’ traditional heavy metal two-finger salute with a single raised middle finger. The audience surges toward her, grasping at her hands. Blonde hair covers her face and the mic as she launches into something between a growl and a wail. The savage opera begins, with stories mined from childhood abuse to life during wartime.

Heavily influenced by the emotional rawness of Nirvana and the social messages of early East Coast rap and hip hop, OTEP blends a sharp spoken word style with blistering metal guitars. Shamaya’s background in literature shines through with lyrics that are clear and dramatic. If having one of the few female frontpersons in metal — and its only out lesbian — seems like a recipe for disaster, think again: OTEP played Ozzfest 2001, 02, and 04 (they didn’t perform at Ozzfest 2003 because Shamaya was writing their second album, House of Secrets).

This year OTEP is headlining the Alliance of Defiance tour, with forty stops scheduled through the spring.

AfterEllen.com: With the kind of diverse musical influences you had, what brought you to metal?

Otep Shamaya: Aggression, that’s it. I’m quite an aggressive person. I needed a sonic landscape that was just as aggressive as I am. Bands like Slayer and Slipknot, hearing those bands, there was something phenomenal about the way they communicated their messages. Just so precisely, like barbwire. I just fell in love with it. It never occurred to me that women don’t do this kind of music. It never even crossed my mind that I was a rarity or something unique. It didn’t cross my mind that I’m a lesbian and there were no other lesbians around me.

AE: That are out.

OS: That I know of, so it never even crossed my mind why I should hide it. Why I should hide anything. Why should I think along those terms? I don’t feel like I’m something unique. So far I’ve only had a few people who seem to have a problem with me being here. Mostly because I’m a woman, and I guess I’m the antithesis of what they embrace as what a woman is. Like, you know, tits and ass. The sexuality of what I do is not even a part of it. If there is anything in there that people can see as erotic, it’s not anything overt. Everyone needs an enemy, and all too often it’s us. If you’re not just gay for a day or bisexual…

AE: Or you’re not there for them to watch with their girlfriend!

OS: Exactly, I get that a lot, even from girls. It’s weird. “Oh I’d be lesbian for Otep. Maybe she’d let my boyfriend join in.” Ew! No! I think the lesbian community is just now showing all of itself, all of its faces. Where as before, people might have a certain idea of what a lesbian is. The more exposure people get to any community I think is good. I don’t judge them based on their lives, and I don’t care if they like mine or not, I’m not here for that. We are born alone and we die alone, what’s in between is mine.

AE: Is this your first band ever?

OS: This is my first band. I tooled around with musicians, but I was never formally trained. Equipment, timing, different time signatures, I didn’t know any of that stuff. I sat with musicians, learned a little bit by osmosis. It’s a completely different mental process from writing.

When I started the band I found a manager and I brought my books over, my journals and all my illustrations in this big pile. “This is what I want, I want to turn this into music”. And he looked at me and said “OK, let’s try it, let’s find some musicians.”

What we do is a little different, it’s not just your typical metal show. It’s not hair metal or glam or anything of that nature. It’s sort of a dissident cabaret, its theater and in the highest respect to someone like Antonin Artaud. It’s delivering the experience of the topic of the song versus just singing about it, we actually live every moment of the song onstage. Without fire or any sort of theatrics or anything. It’s all through the act of performance.

AE: How did Capitol [Records] find you guys?

OS: We were doing local shows around LA and the buzz started and all of a sudden we start noticing suits in the corners watching us and on their phones and their little Blackberries. A friend of ours was our manager at the time and he started coming over and saying “Hey they want to showcase you.” It was a bunch of major labels which was really bizarre, because I never thought we’d get that.

AE: That’s exciting.

OS: It was, it was really exciting to have that kind of recognition, especially for what we do. We’d only been a band about eight months by the time we got signed. It happened so quick. And Sharon Osbourne came with her son Jack to one of the shows, at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip. Sure enough, right after the show, she came up and said “Hey, you guys are playing Ozzfest.” And she hugged me.

AE: What the hell was that like?

OS: Yeah! You know what, Sharon’s great, man. She’s a really strong woman. And a lot of people give her a bad name, but that’s just typical for any woman that’s in power/charge. We said “Hey Sharon, we don’t have a record deal.” She said “I don’t care, make it happen.” I don’t know, the stars were in line or something for us that week. Not only did Sharon come out and offer us Ozzfest before we had a record deal, we had three showcases that same week. Capitol called us back for one more showcase, they said we’re gonna bring down somebody and we want you to do it one more time. And I said okay.

AE: How did that go?

OS: So there’s this little club called the Viper Room that Johnny Depp used to own. Really nice, really cool place. It’s real intimate, and a great vibe there. It’s haunted—

AE: By who, do you know?

OS: Not sure. But things have always happened strange for us when we are there. I’m a big Doors fan, and so when we got there the sound guy goes “Now look, while you guys are setting up, if the music just starts playing in here, like from our CD player, it’s not us. We have an electronic problem. Actually we have a ghost.” And I said “Oh uh whatever.”

AE: It’s the old electronic problem slash ghost. (laughs)

OS: Yeah, ‘slash ghost’. (laughs) And I guess if you don’t believe in ghosts, then you latch onto the electronic problem. If you believe in ghosts…so I just dismissed it as ok whatever this guy is just trying to set a mood. So we’re standing there and sure enough, you know, I’m talking to somebody about something and right over the speakers “Roadhouse Blues” just erupted.

AE: Wow!

OS: And lights would come on and off periodically. It’s just a really bizarre place.

AE: Holy shit! That’s cool. Little visitation from Jim Morrison.

OS: It was a nice little visit from Mr. Morrison to come down and say “Hi” on the day we decided we were going to sign with Capitol. I took that as a big omen. So we did the show and after the show I’m always trapped in this whirlwind of emotion. So I walked outside, came out the back door, and there’s all the Capitol guys on their phones saying “Now! We gotta make this deal happen now!” It’s been a really quick ride.

This is a message driven band and we stand for something. For me it’s so important to live it and not just pretend it. To get over having some sense of celebrity or fame or notoriety or money or girls or whatever, that’s not what I started this for. So I’ve gone through players trying to find people who are like minded. Our fans are very passionate people and I think they’re for the same kind of things we’re searching for.

And you can’t take advantage of that. It’s easy, it’s tempting to do. You get people that want to get close to you and get to know you, but what they are looking for is what’s in your music. There is some honor in living by that. And not “Oh well, this girl is damaged and needs someone to stand by her, well okay I can take advantage of that with a quick night and then be back on my bus be on my way”. I don’t think that’s what this project is for. There’s a thousand other bands out there that do that. So anybody that doesn’t want to shed their skin and be a part of this movement, then they can be in one of those other thousand and one bands.

AE: What is the message you are talking about as far as the band goes?

OS: There’s many messages I think, but the overall message is that art saves. I come from a very aggressive background, poverty, violence, religious persecution. So the only thing that allowed me to either not become a victim or a victimizer, which is all too often the case as well, or seeking out other people to victimize me, was art. I ended up not hurting myself, as much, or hurting anyone else, as much.

The music itself is a celebration of survival. I think it celebrates the fact that, as the existentialist movement embraces, life is shit, there is nothingness and life is pain. By embracing that, you become a whole person, you become joyful and exciting. Not by not looking at it and not facing it. This embraces it and takes it head on.

Then celebrates that we’ve overcome any obstacle put in front of us. I think that is a message lacking in aggressive music and I think that’s another thing that sets us apart from the herd.

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