Written By Sabbatha Ashvale
Women in Metal
The Unruly Ones
Women in metal have never been unruly by accident.
They didn’t break rules because they misunderstood them. They broke them because the rules were designed to keep women in a box, keep anger contained, and ambition legible.
Being “unruly” has always meant more than volume or attitude, it’s meant noncompliance, withholding, misuse of expectation, and the refusal to perform comfort on demand.
The women in this chapter didn’t soften their edges to survive. They sharpened them. They played harder and took up space without asking waiting to find out if anyone was ready.
Some did it through confrontation, others through indifference but all of them made it clear that permission was never part of the process.
This is not a celebration of rebellion, it’s an archive of women who disrupted the signal and never apologized for the noise.
A Rip in Time: Women in Metal. A Metal Lair™ Original Series documenting women who shaped and expanded the underground.
Explore previous chapters of A Rip in Time: Women in Metal, including The Dangerous Ones, The Rebellious Ones and The Defiant Ones.
Women in Metal: Karla Chubb (Svalbard)
Moment: Open Wound – (When I Die, Will I Get Better? 2020)
This is the “unruly” thing: she made heaviness emotionally explicit and socially sharp without hiding behind vague metal poetry.
Deep Cut: Feminazi – (It’s Hard to Have Hope 2018)
It’s confrontational, polarizing, and purpose-built to piss off the right people.
Why Them:
Karla Chubb stands at the intersection of emotional vulnerability and absolute sonic brutality.
Her work with Svalbard proves that heaviness doesn’t have to hide behind abstraction, it can be direct, confrontational, and painfully honest.
She channels personal trauma and social consciousness into post-metal that feels urgent rather than ornamental, making her voice one of the most emotionally credible in modern heavy music.
Women in Metal: Donita Sparks (L7)
Moment: Pretend We’re Dead – (Bricks Are Heavy 1992)
Pretend We’re Dead put L7 on the map not just as punk-grunge rockers but as a band who refused to be palatable.
Written by Donita Sparks amid personal upheaval, the track combines sardonic detachment with unrelenting attitude.
A direct contrast to the emotional soft ballads dominating early ’90s radio. It reached audiences internationally and became one of L7’s most recognizable songs, proving that women in heavy music could be cynical, loud, and unfiltered without compromise.
Deep Cut: Shove – (Smell The Magic 1990)
Shove predates L7’s commercial breakthrough and shows their core before the spotlight. Sludgy, confrontational, and openly hostile.
This track is unruly in the purest sense: no irony, no wink, no polish. It proves L7 didn’t become aggressive for the mainstream, they were already dangerous long before it showed up.
Why Them:
Donita Sparks was unruly because she refused emotional access. At a time when women in rock were expected to be either grateful, confessional, or decorative, Sparks chose detachment as armor.
Songs like “Pretend We’re Dead” weren’t theatrical despair, they were survival tactics, written during personal upheaval, financial instability, and industry burnout.
Her refusal to explain herself, soften her anger, or perform vulnerability on demand made L7 dangerous in a way the mainstream couldn’t easily package.
Sparks modeled emotional withdrawal as strength, not weakness, showing women that they didn’t owe clarity, comfort, or catharsis to anyone watching.
That kind of refusal wasn’t just rare in the early ’90s, it was revolutionary.
Women in Metal: Amalie Bruun – Myrkur
Moment: Onde børn (M 2015)
“Onde børn” is the track that detonated the conversation around Myrkur.
Blending black metal blast beats with clean, almost hymnal vocals, it challenged the genre’s gatekeeping head-on. The backlash wasn’t about musical quality, it was about permission.
Bruun became unruly by refusing to contort herself into black metal orthodoxy, proving that extremity could coexist with vulnerability, melody, and tradition without apology.
Deep Cut: Den lille piges død (Mausoleum 2016)
This track strips Myrkur down to grief, ritual, and restraint. Sparse, funereal, and unsettling, it reveals Bruun’s core strength: atmosphere over spectacle.
Where “Onde børn” forced visibility, “Den lille piges død” asserts intention showing that her work was never about provocation alone, but about emotional weight and ancestral memory.
Why Them:
Amalie Bruun is unruly because she exposed black metal’s unwritten rules as cultural, not sacred.
Myrkur refused the demand that women either perfectly mimic tradition or stay out of the room entirely.
By integrating folk heritage, clean vocals, and emotional directness into extreme music, Bruun forced the scene to confront its own contradictions proving that purity is a myth, and evolution is inevitable.
Women in Metal: – Michelle “Chainsaw” Johnson – Cycle Sluts From Hell
Moment: I Wish You Were a Beer (Cycle Sluts From Hell 1991)
“I Wish You Were a Beer” announced Cycle Sluts From Hell as unruly by design. Midway through the track, the guitar rips into distorted wailing of “Singin’ in the Rain.”
Not as a joke, but as a collision. That melodic reference to sanitized cheerfulness is dragged through distortion, swagger, and volume, turning innocence into mockery without ever spelling it out.
At the same time, the band is shredding, and locking in with the kind of confidence and technical force usually reserved for male hard rock peers while openly owning their sex appeal instead of apologizing for it.
The message was clear: women could play harder, look better, and still refuse to behave.
Deep Cut: Bloodlust (Alive at the Whisky 1992)
Bloodlust strips away the humor and leans fully into punk style aggression. In a live setting, the song exposes the band’s raw intent, less cartoonish, more confrontational.
This is where Cycle Sluts prove they weren’t a novelty act leaning on shock alone; they had weight, bite, and real underground credibility beneath the chaos.
Why Them:
Michelle “Chainsaw” Johnson was unruly because she rejected the idea that women needed legitimacy to justify excess.
Cycle Sluts From Hell didn’t ask to be taken seriously, they took the damn space by sheer force of presence.
Chainsaw’s vocals and persona flipped shock rock on its head: obscene, aggressive, funny, and self-directed.
The band’s existence alone challenged the assumption that women in metal had to choose between respectability and power. They chose neither and that was the whole point.
Women in Metal: Marz Riesterer (Hulder)
Moment: Upon Frigid Winds (Godslastering: Hymns of a Forlorn Peasantry 2021)
Upon Frigid Winds is where Hulder stopped being whispered about and started being felt.
The track gained traction not through hype, visuals, or scene alignment, but through sheer endurance, repetitive, abrasive, and hostile to casual listening.
This was black metal that didn’t care if you stayed. For women in extreme music, the unruliness here was defiance: no polish, no translation, no invitation.
Deep Cut: Burden of Flesh and Bone (The Eternal Fanfare 2022)
This track doubles down on Hulder’s core philosophy: atmosphere over momentum, ritual over release.
It’s less immediate, more punishing in its patience, and reveals Marz’s commitment to black metal as a state of being rather than a performance. No climax, no concession, just persistence.
Why Them:
Marz Riesterer is unruly because Hulder rejects visibility. There’s no modern sheen and no concern for accessibility, just isolation, repetition, and abrasion delivered without explanation.
Hulder doesn’t soften black metal for outsiders or repackage it for relevance; it treats the genre as a closed environment where endurance is the only requirement.
In a landscape where women in extreme music are often asked to prove legitimacy, Hulder refuses the premise entirely.
The music doesn’t ask to be understood, liked, or contextualized, it exists as a barrier. That boundary is the point. Hulder isn’t here to expand the audience. It’s here to withstand it.
Unruliness doesn’t phase into respectability. It either holds its ground or disappears.
What ties these women together isn’t genre, era, or sound, it’s intent. Each of them rejected the quiet compromises that make a career easier and chose presence over approval.
They didn’t ask to be understood, embraced, or contextualized. They existed on their own terms and let the friction speak for itself.
That’s the part history keeps trying to sand down, the eroticism, the abrasion and the confidence without justification.
Unruly women in metal were never here to be smoothed out. They were here to leave marks. And if their work still feels challenging, abrasive, or too much, good. That means it’s still alive.
FAQ – A RIP IN TIME: WOMEN IN METAL
Q: What is A Rip in Time: Women in Metal?
A Rip in Time is Metal Lair’s ongoing tribute to the women who’ve reshaped heavy music. Each installment spotlights a groundbreaking artist who challenged the genre’s boundaries from vocal ferocity to creative evolution, showing that metal’s history isn’t just told through distortion, but through defiance.
Q: What makes this series different?
It’s not a checklist of “women in music.” It’s a time-ripping journey through genres, eras, sounds, and revolutions. Each feature dives into how these artists rewrote their own rules, their riffs, their philosophies and their fire.
Q: Who’s been featured so far?
Each chapter covers a distinct voice in metal’s lineage. Figures like Doro Pesch, Floor Jansen, Angela Gossow, Sabina Classen, Tatiana Shmailyuk and more have been featured. With more icons and unsung heroes to come.
Q: How often does the series update?
A Rip in Time appears periodically throughout the year as new chapters are researched and written. It’s designed to evolve, not just repeat.
Q: Does Metal Lair have other series like this?
Yes! Metal Lair runs several signature series that explore every corner of heavy music:
- Seven Deadly Songs – A weekly roundup of the most unholy new releases.
- Deep Cuts – Hidden gems and lost recordings from rock and metal history.
- Metalhead Horoscopes – Weekly forecasts laced with riffs, attitude, and a lucky song for every sign.
- World Metal Weekly – A global passport through the underground, one country at a time.
- Ministry of Metal – A satirical authority devoted to the laws, rituals, and unspoken rules of heavy music. Proclamations, decrees, cultural edicts, and metal lore delivered with humor and bite.
- Metal Legacy Profiles –
Deep dive essays honoring artists who shaped metal’s sound, culture, and philosophy. These aren’t timelines or greatest-hits lists, but examinations of impact, conflict, evolution, and what each figure left behind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sabbatha Ashvale is Metal Lair’s resident wildfire in eyeliner. A music journalist and storyteller who writes like she’s swinging a torch through the catacombs of heavy music. She’s equal parts historian and shit-stirrer. Her work focuses on artistry, history, and the often overlooked creators who define metal’s evolving future. She brings depth, grit, and a razor sharp perspective to every piece she writes.