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When Ithaca bandleader Djamila Boden Azzouz first entered the music business, she battled a double normal. On the one hand, she felt stress to overly feminize and overly sexualize herself to face an opportunity of being included. On the opposite, Boden Azzouz was made to really feel as if she couldn’t be female if she wished to be taken critically. She couldn’t win. “It’s metallic. It’s hardcore. You must be one of many boys. That’s one thing I’ve struggled with my complete profession, significantly once I was youthful,” she explains.
There have been different dimensions, nonetheless, to this wrestle. Even because the scene has begun to heat as much as ladies, most of the time, those who had been first to be celebrated had been white, straight and skinny. Boden Azzouz is none of these items. “It’s at all times been actually exhausting for me,” she confesses. Whereas nice progress has been made in beginning dialogues about race and queerness, fatness has been unnoticed of the dialog.
“Individuals don’t wish to speak about it as a result of it’s fucking uncomfortable,” Boden Azzouz causes. “Skinny folks don’t prefer to acknowledge skinny privilege in music, significantly in metallic music. No matter gender identification, being skinny is the one fixed. There isn’t any illustration for folks like me on this music scene. You’ve bought folks like Lizzo in pop music who’re breaking floor there, however heavy music is one million fucking miles away.”
Learn extra: Inside the subsequent wave of British heavy metallic
However now, Boden Azzouz is completed with feeling overwhelmed down: “I’ve reached some extent the place I simply don’t care anymore.” That fury has change into blazing defiance on Ithaca’s second album, They Concern Us, a document that celebrates distinction and aspires to it. Brightening the metallic hardcore template with influences from new wave, ’80s energy pop and ’90s industrial, they’re right here to be a splash of shade — fairly actually, given Boden-Azzouz’s love of orange clothes — in a scene that’s somewhat too keen on black.
“We had been actually simply pondering, ‘How can we as a band write this music that we actually love and pay homage to those bands that we actually love and make it new and recent and fascinating?’” Boden Azzouz says. “There are such a lot of bands on the market which might be simply writing the identical riffs. I don’t wish to hearken to 10 bands that sound like Botch. I’ll simply hearken to Botch. You actually must carry one thing new.”
The identical goes for visuals. “A bunch of white dudes stood in a forest? I don’t wish to hearken to that,” she continues. “I don’t care what the music seems like as a result of I’m bored wanting on the images.” The London five-piece steered as distant from the tropes of metallic album art work as attainable — actually, they hoped to create one thing that wouldn’t seem like a metallic cowl in any respect. “We wished one thing that was undoubtedly extra dramatic. We wished the visible to match the depth of the document.” It sees Boden-Azzouz sitting on a throne within the massive orange gown that’s changing into her trademark, flanked by her bandmates — James Lewis, Will Candy, Dom Moss and Sam Chetan-Welsh — who’re all wearing white and grey. Above their heads, the album title is written in a curly font exported from the ’70s. It seems to be regal because it deserves from a band who, on its title monitor, ship a mosh name as highly effective as “Bow earlier than your gods.”
The quilt can be designed to faucet into one of many document’s key themes — what Boden Azzouz phrases “divine female energy.” As an antidote for the trimmings of a patriarchal scene, Ithaca are right here to exhibit that femininity ought to not be scorned, however embraced. “Lots of people affiliate that phrase with very particular concepts, however there isn’t any proper means to take a look at or describe femininity,” she asserts. “One of many massive issues is that embracing femininity isn’t just for ladies. It’s one thing everybody can and will check out. Males assume that feminism is an assault on them and so they’re lacking the fucking level. All of us profit from feminism. Nobody loses. What we’re doing is placing divine femininity and female energy on a pedestal.”
It is a very important train when Boden Azzouz finds herself continuously pissed off by what she perceives to be a relentless present of performative feminism inside the scene. “I discover it actually irritating that bands and folks love to speak about feminism and say they’re a feminist, however they don’t truly observe it. I’d quite they didn’t. I’d quite they simply fucking go away. It’s straightforward for bands to say that they’re feminists and stuff, however then let me see your [tour] lineups. Who’s in your crew? Who do you’re employed with? Plenty of folks like to connect themselves to it as a result of it’s the factor to do, and so many individuals don’t wish to be seen as not doing the precise factor, however then they don’t truly do [anything].”
Finally, Ithaca wish to each push open the gates to metallic, inviting in individuals who didn’t assume metallic tradition may very well be someplace they’d be welcomed. They wish to look out on the crowd once they play and see a extra numerous array of faces. (In truth, the extra ladies Boden Azzouz can see stage diving, the higher). They’re simply as glad to succeed in past the scene and get into the ears of people that may need ever encountered the genres by which they play.
“By getting a bit bizarre with it, and placing all these totally different influences into the document, I do really feel prefer it has the potential to succeed in individuals who wouldn’t name themselves a metallic fan,” Boden Azzouz says. “My hope is they could hear it and understand there are different methods of doing this music, and also you don’t have to stay to the confines of the style. We actually wish to diversify the scene, but in addition diversify the music itself. Metallic is for you, and there may be house for you there.”
