Written By Sabbatha Ashvale
Women in Metal – The Powerhouses
At Metal Lair, celebrating women in heavy music isn’t something we do once a year when the calendar reminds everyone it’s the polite thing to do.
Our Women in Metal series has been running for months, spotlighting the artists who have shaped, sharpened, and sometimes completely reimagined what heavy music can be.
But today felt like the right moment to turn the volume up.
For this special edition, we’ve doubled our usual entries from five to ten extraordinary women whose voices, riffs, rhythms, and visions helped push rock and metal into new territory.
Some are pioneers who carved space in scenes that weren’t always eager to make room for them. Others are modern architects redefining the future of heavy music in real time.
Different eras. Different sounds. The same unmistakable force.
Women in Metal: International Women’s Day Edition
This is A Rip in Time: Women in Metal – International Women’s Day Edition.
A Rip in Time: Women in Metal is 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: Janis Joplin
Moment: Piece of My Heart – Cheap Thrills (1968)
By the late 60s, “Piece of My Heart” was everywhere blasting from car radios, spinning on living-room turntables, and pouring out of 8-track players on long highway drives, turning Janis Joplin into one of the most unmistakable voices in rock history.
But the power of Janis wasn’t just volume or chart success. It was the emotional violence in her delivery. She sang like someone tearing open old wounds in real time, turning heartbreak, loneliness, and rage into something electrifying. Every cracked note felt brutally honest. The sound of a woman refusing to hide her pain.
At a time when female singers were often expected to sound delicate or refined, Janis did the opposite. She let the rough edges show, and in doing so proved that vulnerability and ferocity could exist in the same breath.
Deep Cut: Mary Jane – Typewriter Tape (1965)
Long before fame found her, Janis Joplin was recording rough blues demos in a small room with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a typewriter clacking out the rhythm.
“Mary Jane,” captured on the so-called Typewriter Tapes in 1965, reveals a completely different side of Janis. Instead of the explosive rock vocalist the world would soon know, her voice here is low, sly, and steeped in Delta blues tradition.
It sounds less like a 60s rock singer and more like a wandering blues troubadour from another era, proof that the raw power audiences later witnessed at Monterey was built on deep, old-school roots.
Why Them:
Because Janis fucking Joplin…
She wasn’t just a blues-rock singer. She was basically proto-metal energy in a psychedelic body.
Before arena rock, before metal vocalists shattered microphones, before the word “frontwoman” even carried weight in heavy music, there was Janis Joplin.
A voice that sounded like it had crawled out of the Texas dirt, swallowed a thunderstorm, and decided to sing anyway. Her voice wasn’t polished, she was a howling she-wolf
Before progressive metal audiences watched Mikael Åkerfeldt glide effortlessly between angelic clean vocals and cavernous growls, Janis Joplin was already blowing minds with the same emotional whiplash.
At the Monterey Pop Festival, performing Ball and Chain with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis moved from a fragile whisper to a soul-ripping howl in seconds. It wasn’t just singing, it was emotional combustion.
The crowd had never seen anything like it. Half the audience looked stunned, the other half looked like they’d just witnessed a religious experience.
Every note carried gravel and pain. The sound of someone who had spent her whole life being told she didn’t belong anywhere.
Growing up in Port Arthur, Texas, Janis was bullied relentlessly by classmates for the way she looked and the music she loved. She was too loud, strange and passionate. That kind of isolation has a way of shaping artists into something combustible. And Janis burned hot. She turned her anguish into a voice no one could ignore.
They say great art is born from pain. If that’s true, Janis Joplin climbed the mountain carrying the whole damn storm with her.
Onstage, she sang like heartbreak was a physical force tearing through her chest. Offstage, she fought a quieter battle with alcohol, heroin, loneliness, and an industry that didn’t quite know what to do with a woman who refused to conform.
Men adored her voice but rarely respected the person behind it. Record labels saw a star they could market, not an artist they needed to protect. But when Janis stepped onto a stage, none of that mattered.
Because in those moments, her voice became something bigger than the chaos around her – a raw, volcanic sound that would influence generations of rock and metal vocalists who came after.
Janis exploded in the late 60s counterculture and more than fifty years later, we still haven’t heard another voice quite like it.
Women in Metal: Stevie Nicks
Moment: Rhiannon – live performances (1975–76)
When Miss Nicks began performing “Rhiannon” live in the mid-1970s, the song slowly transformed into something far stranger than the studio recording suggested.
Night after night onstage, the performance stretched and evolved. The tempo slowed. The band gave her space. And Stevie stepped into the center of the stage wrapped in black chiffon and spinning shawls, turning the final section of the song into a hypnotic trance.
Her voice would rise from a whisper to a full-throated wail, repeating the name Rhiannon like an incantation. The audience didn’t just hear the song. They watched it unfold like a possession.
People who saw those early performances often described the same reaction. Half the room looked mesmerized. The other half looked like they’d just witnessed a sacred ritual they weren’t supposed to see.
Deep Cut: Blue Lamp – Heavy Metal soundtrack (1981)
Stevie Nicks’ most direct brush with the metal world came in an unexpected place: the soundtrack to the cult animated film Heavy Metal (1981).
Her song “Blue Lamp” drifts through the movie like a midnight signal, all shadow and atmosphere. It’s darker and moodier than most of her radio hits, built on a steady pulse that feels closer to a slow-burning ritual than a pop song.
The track shows a different side of Stevie’s voice, less arena spectacle and more nocturnal mysticism. For metal fans digging through the archives, “Blue Lamp” feels like a hidden doorway between two worlds: classic rock mythology and the darker aesthetic that heavy music would later embrace.
Why Them:
Stevie Nicks isn’t metal in the genre sense. But her fingerprints are all over the genre’s mythology.
Long before metal frontwomen began embracing the “High Priestess” archetype, Stevie was already standing on stage wrapped in black velvet and candlelight, singing like a storm had taken human form.
The mysticism, the emotional intensity and the sense that the singer might be channeling something older than the music itself. That aesthetic runs straight through the lineage of artists like Maria Brink, Floor Jansen, and countless others who followed.
But Stevie’s power wasn’t just theatrical. When she joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, she did it on one condition: she and Lindsey Buckingham would enter as equal partners. Not as hired musicians. Not as someone’s girlfriend tagging along for the ride. Equal. In the hyper-masculine rock world of the 1970s, that alone was a radical demand.
She also quietly shattered one of rock’s oldest glass ceilings, becoming the first woman ever inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. Once with Fleetwood Mac. Once as a solo artist. It took years before anyone else joined her in that club.
But Stevie’s most lasting contribution might be something far less tangible.
Before Stevie Nicks, women in rock lyrics were often written as saints, sinners, or tragic muses. Stevie took a word that had been used for centuries to demonize powerful women and turned it into armor. Songs like “Rhiannon” and “Gold Dust Woman” transformed the witch archetype into something completely different. Not a villain. A symbol of autonomy, intuition, and emotional power.
Even now she treats her stage persona like living mythology. Her signature shawls, boots, and flowing black dresses are preserved in a climate-controlled archive worth over a million dollars. Not as costumes, but as artifacts from a career that blurred the line between rock star and modern folklore. And she’s still using that voice.
In 2024 she released “The Lighthouse,” a defiant anthem written as a rallying cry for women’s rights, stating openly that she wanted to speak for the next generation of women whose autonomy was under threat.
Half a century into her career, Stevie Nicks is still doing what she always has. Lighting fires and watching the storm roll in.
Women in Metal: Debbie Harry
Moment: Heart of Glass – Parallel Lines (1978)
Knee deep in the “Disco Sucks” backlash, Blondie unleashed “Heart of Glass” in 1978 and confused the hell out of everybody. It wasn’t punk. It wasn’t disco. It was Debbie Harry and company smashing punk attitude, disco rhythm, and rock swagger together and daring the world to keep up.
Emerging from the gritty stage of CBGB, Debbie Harry had already built a reputation as one of the most magnetic figures in New York’s underground scene. But Parallel Lines turned that underground buzz into international impact.
More importantly, it proved that Debbie Harry could command both the raw chaos of the punk underground and the polished stage of mainstream success without losing the cool defiance that made her iconic.
Deep Cut: Rifle Range – Blondie (1976)
Before disco grooves and new-wave polish entered the picture, Blondie was very much a product of the gritty Bowery punk scene.
On “Rifle Range,” Debbie Harry delivers a sharp, detached vocal over a jittery garage-rock assault that captures the restless energy of mid-70s downtown New York.
The track feels dangerous in the best way that feels arty, aggressive, and unapologetically weird. It’s a reminder that before Blondie conquered international charts, they were one of the scrappy bands helping ignite the punk scene movement.
Why Them:
Most people think of her through the lens of Blondie’s hits like Heart of Glass or the sleek new-wave era around Parallel Lines. But her personal history and the environment she came out of were far rougher than the pop image suggests.
Long before the Bowery punk explosion, Debbie Harry was navigating a very different corner of New York nightlife. From 1968 to 1973 she worked as a Bunny at the city’s Playboy Club, a tightly controlled environment built around glamour and performance.
That job was actually pretty common for women trying to survive in New York’s creative world at the time.
Models, dancers, singers, and artists often worked there because the pay was better than most service jobs. But it’s a wild contrast when you think about it.
But that polished world couldn’t contain her for long. A few years later she’s standing on stage fronting a scrappy punk band in a grimy Bowery club that smelled like piss, stale beer and cigarette smoke.
The grit behind the glamour:
Debbie came up in the mid-70s downtown New York world – CBGB on the Bowery during the early punk scene.
That environment was chaotic, dangerous, and gritty. Crime, drugs, and survival culture were basically part of the landscape. It was closer to a punk-rock street war zone than the polished pop image people remember.
In her memoir Face It, Debbie described a frightening experience early in her career where she was lured into a situation by a man who attempted to traffic her.
She managed to escape, but the incident stayed with her for years. It’s something she rarely discussed publicly until later in life.
Because Blondie’s music crossed into pop, disco, and new wave, people sometimes forget how hard-edged rock and punk the band actually was in the beginning. Debbie wasn’t a manufactured frontwoman, she was a punk-scene survivor who lived through multiple layers of New York’s cultural ecosystem and helped build that movement.
CBGB wasn’t glamorous at all when Debbie Harry and Blondie started playing there in the mid-70s. The Bowery was rough, the club was filthy, and the stage was basically a proving ground for bands that didn’t fit anywhere else.
What makes Debbie fascinating in that environment is that she stood out in two directions at once. She was visually striking with platinum blonde hair and a magnetic presence.
The world eventually saw Debbie Harry as a pop icon, but she was forged in the grime of the Bowery. Argue with me all you want but she was a rockstar in her own right.
She was completely comfortable in the dangerous, sweaty punk trenches. She wasn’t some polished pop singer stepping into the scene. She was in it from the beginning, grinding it out in the same clubs as everyone else.
CBGB was a dirty club in a dangerous neighborhood supporting misfit artists and suddenly it produces bands that reshaped rock history.
Women in Metal: Nancy Wilson
Moment: Barracuda – Little Queen (1977)
When the opening riff of “Barracuda” hits, it doesn’t simply start a song. It announces a predator. Four notes, tight, relentless, stalking forward like something circling its prey.
The rhythm gallops with mechanical precision while the guitars slash through the air like sharpened steel. Nearly fifty years later, the song still sounds dangerous.
The story behind it is just as sharp. After a record executive spread a rumor implying Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson were lovers as a publicity stunt, the band responded the only way they knew how: by writing a song that bit back.
Ann penned the furious lyrics and Nancy helped channel that anger into the song’s driving musical force.
As guitarist and co-writer within Heart, Nancy shaped the track’s relentless momentum and razor-sharp attack, helping turn the band’s outrage into something explosive rather than merely personal.
Released in 1977 on Little Queen, “Barracuda” became more than a hit, it became a warning shot that women in heavy rock were not going to play nice.
Deep Cut: The Wolf– Bad Animals (1987)
Tucked inside the glossy sheen of Bad Animals is a track that prowls far from the radio hits. “The Wolf” trades arena polish for atmosphere, letting tension simmer beneath the surface while Ann Wilson delivers a vocal that feels watchful and dangerous rather than explosive.
It’s the sound of a band capable of far darker moods than the chart-toppers that defined the era.
For listeners willing to wander deeper into Heart’s catalog, “The Wolf” reveals the shadow side of the Wilson sisters’ artistry.
It’s not a flashy anthem, but a slow-burning track that hints at the raw power and mystique that made Heart such an enduring force. It’s the kind of song that reminds you the band’s heart has always had teeth.
Why Them:
Nancy Wilson’s legacy in heavy music is often underestimated because Heart never carried the “metal” label. But they still slapped.
She helped establish something fundamental to the DNA of heavy guitar music, contrast.
Her playing could shift from delicate acoustic fingerpicking to arena-shaking electric riffs without losing emotional intensity. That dynamic tension became one of the defining tools of heavy music.
Quiet passages build suspense. The distortion hits harder when it finally arrives. Metal thrives on that dramatic architecture.
Before guitar hero culture turned technical shredding into a competitive sport, Nancy Wilson was already proving that the real power of the instrument came from controlled skill.
She understood how to make a riff feel dangerous, how to build a song like a thunderstorm, and how to stand at the center of a band commanding the entire battlefield. Decades later, countless metal guitarists still follow that same blueprint.
Women in Metal: Pat Benatar
Moment: Hit Me With Your Best Shot – Crimes of Passion (1980)
By the time Crimes of Passion came out in 1980, Pat Benatar had already drop kicked the industry door down that tried to barricade women from the private boys’ club known as rock.
“Hit Me With Your Best Shot” hit the airwaves like a challenge thrown across the room. The song itself came from songwriter Eddie Schwartz, who reportedly got the title after attending a therapeutic punching-pillow session. A strange origin story for a rock anthem, but once Benatar got her hands on it, the song stopped being therapy and started sounding like combat.
Neil Giraldo’s guitar riff snaps like a switchblade while Benatar steps into the vocal with zero hesitation. No coyness. No softness. Just a voice that sounds like it’s perfectly happy to stare down whatever comes next.
The lyrics might frame it as romantic bravado, telling a smooth-talking heartbreaker to take his best shot, but the real impact was bigger than that. Benatar wasn’t flirting with danger. She was instigating it.
At a time when arena rock was still packed with big dick swinging frontmen weilding microphones like weapons, Pat Benatar walked out with one of the most ferocious voices in the room and made it clear she could hit just as hard.
Deep Cut: Evil Genius – Precious Time (1981)
Buried deep inside Precious Time sits the snarling rocker “Evil Genius,” a track that never chased radio play and somehow slipped past the spotlight that followed Pat Benatar’s biggest hits.
Which is a shame, because it highlights one of the most overlooked weapons in Benatar’s arsenal: guitarist Neil Giraldo.
Giraldo’s riff prowls through the song with a sharp, restless energy that feels more street fight than arena anthem. His playing was never about flashy solos or guitar-hero theatrics. It was about tension, groove, and building the kind of sonic backbone that let Benatar’s voice hit like a hammer.
While rock magazines spent decades obsessing over the usual guitar gods, Giraldo quietly helped shape one of the most powerful hard rock catalogs of the era.
Tracks like “Evil Genius” are proof that the real secret behind Benatar’s sound wasn’t just the voice at the microphone. It was the guitar fire burning right behind it.
Why Them:
Long before it was common for rock songs to confront domestic violence, Pat Benatar was already using her platform to shine a light on abuse and injustice.
Benatar did it head-on with Hell Is for Children from the album Crimes of Passion (1980) and Love is A Battlefield from the album Live from Earth (1983).
Hell is For Children isn’t subtle at all. It’s dark, furious, and confrontational. The lyrics deal with the abuse of children and the violence that happens behind closed doors. Something rock radio rarely touched at the time.
Musically it’s heavy. The guitars grind, the tempo stomps forward, and Benatar’s vocal delivery is pure controlled rage. It’s one of the hardest songs she ever recorded.
Pat Benatar used the video for Love Is a Battlefield in 1983 to tell a far darker story than most audiences realized. It was a huge moment. Beneath the neon lights and choreography was a narrative about young women being manipulated and exploited in nightlife and sex industry culture.
That video is basically a mini rebellion film depicting runaway girls organizing and walking out together. For early MTV, that was bold as hell.
The scene where the women lock eyes across the club and silently revolt against the men controlling them was one of the earliest examples of a music video portraying female solidarity and resistance.
This is where Benatar becomes more than a rock vocalist, she becomes a symbol of defiance. The song and video captured a generation of women refusing to be controlled, exploited, or silenced.
“We are strong. No one can tell us we’re wrong.”
For the early 80s, that was basically a battle cry.
Women in Metal: Lita Ford
Moment: Kiss Me Deadly – Lita (1988)
By the late ’80s, Lita Ford had already paid her dues. From teenage shredder in The Runaways to a solo artist fighting for space in a scene crowded with leather-clad BDE rockstars.
“Kiss Me Deadly” was the moment the fight paid off. Built on a razor-edged riff and a pulse that feels like a sports car idling just before the light turns green, the song captured the sleek, neon-lit danger that defined late-’80s hard rock.
Lita’s guitar work doesn’t just decorate the track, it drives it, shifting from tight, controlled rhythm to a solo that cuts through the song like a flash of chrome under stage lights.
Lyrically, the song plays with the era’s favorite theme: love as adrenaline and romance as something reckless and electric.
But what made “Kiss Me Deadly” hit so hard wasn’t just the hook, it was the image. Here was a woman standing center stage in a male dominated arena, not as a pop singer, but as the one holding the guitar and commanding the room.
When the song exploded on radio and MTV in 1988, it didn’t just give Lita Ford a hit; it marked the moment she stepped fully into the spotlight as a metal musician in her own right, proving she could run with the big dogs and still leave teeth marks behind.
Deep Cut: Black Widow – Dancin’ on the Edge (1984)
Before the radio hits and MTV rotation polished her image, Lita Ford was already stalking heavier territory.
“Black Widow” slithers through the shadows of her early solo years, built on sharp riffs and a dark, predatory mood that feels closer to metal’s underbelly than the arena gloss that would come later.
The track captures Lita at her most dangerous. It’s guitar forward with unapologetic attitude and fully in command of the stage she fought to earn after the collapse of The Runaways.
Long before women shredders became common in heavy music, “Black Widow” showed exactly what Lita Ford brought to the fight: venom, volume, and a guitar that bites.
The Solo: This song features some of Lita’s most technical and fluid fretwork. It’s a reminder that before she was a pin-up for MTV, she was a disciple of Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi.
Why Them:
Long before arena metal embraced women with guitars slung low and amps turned to war volume, Lita Ford was already sharpening her blade inside The Runaways.
Joining the band as a teenager in the mid-1970s, Ford quickly became its lead guitarist, carving sharp, snarling solos through songs like Cherry Bomb.
The band itself was assembled by manager Kim Fowley, who understood controversy sells records.
The Runaways were marketed very deliberately: leather, sexuality, rebellion and teenage chaos.
While the band’s image often focused on its frontwomen, Lita was the one quietly building the technical muscle behind the noise – a young guitarist absorbing the language of hard rock and turning it into something heavier.
After the Runaways collapsed in 1979, the real pivot happened. Ford didn’t chase the punk rebellion that followed some of her former bandmates.
Instead she walked straight into the rising world of heavy metal, forging a solo career built on loud guitars and unapologetic power.
By the late 1980s albums like Lita and hits such as “Close My Eyes Forever” featuring Ozzy Osbourne proved she wasn’t just a survivor of a legendary band, she was one of the few women of the era standing center stage as a full-fledged metal guitarist.
In a scene still dominated by men, Lita Ford didn’t play the shy, quiet female type. She simply plugged in and shredded.
Women in Metal: Sean Yseult
Moment: Thunder Kiss ’65 – La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1 (1992)
When “Thunder Kiss ’65” appeared on MTV in the early ’90s, White Zombie had their breakthrough moment.
The song lurched forward on a grinding, mechanical groove that felt equal parts rollercoaster and monster movie, wrapped in distorted guitars and samples that sounded ripped from some forbidden midnight broadcast.
Beneath all that chaos sat the engine: the thick, hypnotic bass lines of Sean Yseult, locking the rhythm into a slow, crushing stride that made the entire track feel unstoppable.
For many listeners, “Thunder Kiss ’65” was their first glimpse into White Zombie’s strange horror-soaked universe.
The song became the band’s breakthrough, turning a gritty New York underground experiment into a national metal phenomenon almost overnight.
And at the center of that monstrous groove stood Sean Yseult – calm, steady, and holding down the low end of a band that suddenly sounded like nothing else on Earth.
Deep Cut: Demonspeed – Make Them Die Slowly (1989)
Before mainstream discovery of White Zombie, the band was already grinding through the underground with a sound that felt filthy, loud, and completely unhinged.
“Demonspeed” roars out of Make Them Die Slowly like a runaway machine, fueled by distorted guitars and a rhythm section that sounds like it’s clawing its way out of the basement.
Beneath the chaos sits the thick, grinding bass of Sean Yseult, anchoring the noise with a slow, heavy pulse.
It’s the sound of White Zombie before the polish. They were raw, dangerous, and still forming the monster they would later unleash on the mainstream.
Long before Thunder Kiss ’65 shook television screens, Sean Yseult was already building the band’s low-end foundation in dark clubs and underground studios, helping forge the sound that would eventually explode into metal history.
Why Them:
This is so much more than the history a of a bassist in an influential band. It’s a story about young artists chasing a dream, navigating love, ego, ambition, and heartbreak while the world suddenly starts paying attention.
Before the grindhouse thunder of White Zombie ever shook arenas, Sean and Rob crossed paths in New York’s late-80s underground art and music circles.
What began as a scrappy New York art experiment between two young creatives blending music, illustration, and midnight-movie horror imagery would eventually mutate into one of metal’s strangest success stories.
Sean and Rob chased White Zombie together out of sheer stubborn ambition and chemistry.
Sean Yseult and Rob Zombie weren’t just bandmates in those early years, they were romantically involved, chasing the same wild rock-and-roll dream through dingy clubs, handmade flyers, and late nights building a band that didn’t sound or look like anything else.
Sean’s bass gave the music its grinding pulse, but her artistic instincts also helped shape the band’s visual identity with the lurid horror graphics, retro monster imagery, and twisted pop-culture collage that made White Zombie feel less like a band and more like a midnight movie come to life.
The romance eventually burned out under the pressure of touring, ambition, and the machinery of the music industry.
But the band didn’t collapse with it. Sean stayed. Through the explosive success of La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One and the dystopian roar of Astro-Creep: 2000.
Her bass remained part of the machine that powered White Zombie’s rise. When the band finally dissolved and Rob moved forward with his solo career, Sean didn’t disappear into the background.
She continued creating and performing with projects like Rock City Morgue, collaborating with underground musicians, working as a photographer and visual artist, and later documenting the entire chaotic journey in her memoir I’m in the Band.
One of the notable things she did was play bass with The Cramps for a period in the early 2000s. It wasn’t a permanent “new band member” situation, more like touring and performing with them for a stretch. But it’s still a pretty wild connection.
Sean was not a side character in White Zombie’s story. She helped build the band’s aesthetic, held down the low end through its rise, and stayed professional even after personal relationships changed.
When they finally disbanded after Astro-Creep, the machine they built together had already left its mark on metal history. Long after the monster movie faded to black, Sean Yseult kept creating in the shadows she helped build.
Women in Metal: Gina Gleason
Moment: Borderlines – Gold & Grey (2019)
When Baroness returned with Gold & Grey, it marked the first full chapter of the band’s new era with Gina Gleason in the lineup.
“Borderlines” captures that shift perfectly. The song surges forward on towering riffs and swirling guitar textures, with Gleason weaving melodic leads through the band’s massive sound like lightning across a storm front.
Her playing brings both technical precision and emotional lift, expanding the dual-guitar language that has always defined Baroness.
More than just a strong track, “Borderlines” feels like a statement of renewal.
After the trauma and lineup changes that reshaped the band earlier in the decade, the song proves Baroness hadn’t lost their creative fire, they had evolved.
With Gina Gleason now sharing the guitar helm, the band stepped into a new chapter that sounded bigger, bolder, and unafraid to push beyond its past.
Deep Cut: Beneath the Rose – Stone (2023)
If “Borderlines” introduced Gina Gleason’s presence in Baroness, “Beneath the Rose” reveals the full depth of her guitar voice.
The track unfolds slowly, building tension through layered melodies and subtle shifts in tone before erupting into towering riffs.
Gleason’s playing moves effortlessly between atmospheric textures and sharp, expressive leads, showing the kind of versatility that makes Baroness’ music feel expansive rather than confined to traditional metal formulas.
Songs like this reveal what Gina brought to the band beyond technical skill. Her approach treats the guitar less like a blunt weapon and more like a storyteller, shaping mood and color as much as raw power.
On Stone, that sensibility helps Baroness sound both heavier and more dynamic, proving the band’s second chapter is not about replacing the past, it’s about pushing the sound forward.
Why Them:
Before Gina Gleason ever stepped into Baroness, the band had already lived through the kind of experiences that changes everything.
Formed in Savannah, Georgia in the early 2000s by singer and guitarist John Baizley and a tight-knit circle of musicians, Baroness quickly carved out a reputation for massive riffs and sprawling, emotional songwriting.
Their albums became known by colors rather than titles. The Red Album, Blue Record, and later Yellow & Green – each one marking a new chapter in the band’s evolution.
But in 2012, while touring behind Yellow & Green, Baroness faced a moment that nearly ended the story entirely.
Their tour bus lost control on a steep, wet road near Bath, England, crashed through a guardrail, and plunged roughly thirty feet off a viaduct and crashed nose first.
Several people were trapped inside the wreckage and had to be cut out by rescue crews. It was a miracle everyone survived.
Band members were seriously injured. Baizley himself suffered broken bones and faced a long recovery. Tours were cancelled, the lineup splintered, and for a time it wasn’t clear if Baroness would survive at all.
When the band returned with Purple in 2015, it felt less like a routine release and more like a band clawing its way back to life.
A few years later another turning point arrived. Founding guitarist Peter Adams stepped away from the band in 2017, leaving a massive hole in Baroness’ twin-guitar architecture.
Into that space walked Gina Gleason. She wasn’t a typical metal recruit. Before joining Baroness, Gleason had built a reputation in musician circles as a frighteningly versatile guitarist, equally comfortable shredding heavy riffs, weaving melodic leads, or sliding across a lap steel guitar.
She had spent time working around major touring productions, including stints as a guitar technician for The Smashing Pumpkins, absorbing the mechanics of large-scale touring while quietly honing her own playing.
When Gleason joined Baroness in 2017, she stepped into a band that had already survived trauma, lineup upheaval, and the loss of a founding member.
Instead of simply mimicking what came before, she expanded the band’s palette. Her playing brought new textures such as blues phrasing, slide guitar and layered melodic lines that began to reshape Baroness’ sound on albums like Gold & Grey (2019) and later Stone (2023).
Nearly a decade later, Gina Gleason is no longer the “new guitarist.” She’s part of the band’s second life. The chapter that proves Baroness didn’t just survive the storm. It learned how to evolve after it.
Women in Metal: Reba Meyers
Moment: Forever – Forever (2017)
When Code Orange released Forever in 2017, it felt like a warning siren for the entire heavy music world.
The title track storms forward with mechanical riffs, industrial noise, and feral vocals that sound less like a traditional metal performance and more like blunt force trauma.
At the center of the chaos stands Reba Meyers, weaving eerie melodic textures and ghostlike harmonies through the band’s violent sonic machinery.
The song didn’t just introduce Code Orange to a wider audience, it announced that a new generation of heavy bands had arrived, one that refused to respect genre borders.
Hardcore, industrial, metal, noise – everything collided at once. “Forever” earned the band a Grammy nomination and cemented Code Orange as one of the most unpredictable forces in modern heavy music.
Through it all, Reba’s presence gave the band its haunting counterbalance, proving that brutality and atmosphere could coexist in the same breath.
Deep Cut: Flowermouth (The Leech) – Love Is Love / Return to Dust (2012)
Long before award nominations and international recognition, Code Orange were just kids playing ferocious hardcore shows.
“Flowermouth (The Leech)” captures that early energy in its rawest form. The song is abrasive, chaotic, and unapologetically ugly in the best possible way. It’s a snapshot of a band still discovering how far they could push their sound.
Even in those early recordings, Reba Meyers’ presence adds a subtle layer of tension beneath the fury.
Her guitar work moves between jagged aggression and eerie tonal shifts, hinting at the atmospheric instincts that would later become a defining part of Code Orange’s identity.
Hearing these early tracks now feels like uncovering the first sparks of a band that would eventually grow into one of the most experimental forces in modern metal.
Why Them:
Reba joined Code Orange when the members were basically kids still in high school.
Which means Reba Meyers grew up inside the band while it evolved from the underground hardcore scene into a Grammy-nominated metal act. She’s part of the generation that stopped caring about genre boundaries.
Originally forming in Pittsburgh under the name Code Orange Kids, the group came out of the kind of DIY hardcore culture where bands learn their craft in cramped basements, VFW halls, and dive bar stages.
Their early sound was raw and confrontational hardcore, but the band’s ambitions were never small. Over time Code Orange began warping that foundation with industrial noise, electronic textures, and moments of eerie melody that made their music feel less like traditional metal and more like something crawling out of a dystopian machine.
That evolution exploded into view with the band’s 2017 album Forever, a chaotic and confrontational record that pushed heavy music into strange new territory.
The album earned a Grammy nomination and turned Code Orange into one of the most talked-about bands of their generation.
Through all of that upheaval, Reba Meyers remained one of the band’s creative anchors.
While vocalist and drummer Jami Morgan often delivers the band’s feral, confrontational energy, Meyers brings the haunting counterweight of ghostly melodies, atmospheric guitar textures, and vocals that feel like they’re echoing through the machinery of the band’s industrial sound.
It’s that contrast that gives Code Orange its unsettling personality.
More than a guitarist, Reba Meyers helped shape the strange hybrid that Code Orange eventually became, a band where hardcore, industrial, metal, and electronic chaos collide without apology.
Women in Metal: Dolores O’Riordan
Moment: Zombie – No Need to Argue (1994)
The release of “Zombie” in 1994 marked a genuine turning point.
While much of No Need to Argue leaned toward dreamy, orchestral folk-rock textures, this track stood apart as a thunderous outlier that revealed Dolores O’Riordan’s grunge-era ferocity and vocal power.
She made a deliberate choice to turn up the distortion.
The chugging central riff, written by Dolores herself on electric guitar, carried a sludge-like weight that resonated with the rising alternative metal scene of the mid-90s. Not only was this song metal as fuck she was one of my stand out artists during this era.
The song’s structure moves from a sparse, haunting bassline into a wall of fuzz, a soft-to-loud dynamic that has long been a cornerstone of heavy music.
And in “Zombie,” Dolores didn’t aim for pristine perfection. She allowed her voice to fracture, crack, and strain, channeling primal anger rather than polish.
That raw delivery quietly gave female vocalists in heavier genres promise to sound furious, wounded, and imperfect emotions.
Metal has always embraced “the heavy,” not only in sound but in subject matter. By confronting the cycle of violence born from the Warrington bombings, “It’s the same old theme since 1916,” Dolores stepped into the role of a social provocateur.
Deep Cut: Íosa (No Need to Argue Sessions 2018)
Sung entirely in Irish Gaelic, “Íosa” remained unreleased for decades because it was considered too mournful and personal for the original album.
The track showcases Dolores O’Riordan’s keening vocal tradition in its purest form. A haunting lament that feels closer to an ancient ritual than a pop song.
Its mournful tone and stark emotional weight resonate strongly with the gothic and doom aesthetics later embraced by heavy music.
Why Them:
While The Cranberries are typically categorized as alternative rock Dolores O’Riordan earned enormous respect within the metal and hard rock community.
Her vocal intensity, songwriting grit, and unapologetic presence carried a rare combination of ethereal beauty and raw, distorted power.
Dolores didn’t just write love songs. She used her platform to confront heavy, often dangerous subjects.
When she wrote Zombie, inspired by the 1993 Warrington bombings, she delivered something closer to a grunge-metal anthem than a traditional alternative rock single.
Her decision to pair heavy, distorted guitars with gut-wrenching vocal breaks transformed a protest song into an indictment of violence.
She frequently spoke out against child abuse and the suffering of the vulnerable, injecting a level of social consciousness into mainstream rock that later influenced many lyricists within heavier genres.
But beyond the message, her voice itself was a technical marvel that shattered conventional rules.
Dolores brought elements of traditional Irish keening, a vocal lament for the dead – into modern rock. Her signature glottal flips and yodel-like breaks became tools for expressing extreme emotional pain, techniques later echoed by numerous female vocalists across the heavier spectrum.
She could shift from a fragile whisper to a banshee-like wail in a single phrase without losing pitch, demonstrating breath control and dynamic range that vocal coaches still analyze today.
And in an era when many female artists were pushed toward carefully curated images, Dolores operated with full autonomy.
She wasn’t merely the frontwoman of The Cranberries, she was the primary songwriter and frequently worked as a co-producer.
Beyond guitar, she was also a classically trained pianist who arranged layered melodies and atmospheric textures that became central to the band’s haunting sound.
Visually and culturally, she also redefined what a powerful woman in rock could look like. With her pixie cut, combat boots, and leather jackets, Dolores rejected the hyper-feminized expectations of the 1990s music industry.
She proved that commanding a stadium had nothing to do with fitting a mold, it required conviction, a message, and a voice capable of shattering glass.
Even near the end of her life, Dolores O’Riordan was still pushing forward creatively. She had been quietly working on a third solo album, writing dozens of songs that explored darker and more experimental territory than the traditional Cranberriessound.
Several of those compositions eventually became part of In the End, the band’s final record released in 2019.
On the day she died, Dolores was in London preparing to record guest vocals for Bad Wolves’ cover of Zombie.
The collaboration would have symbolically brought her most famous protest song fully into the metal world that had long admired her voice.
It never happened. But the invitation itself said everything: the metal community already knew what Dolores O’Riordan was, a voice powerful enough to haunt genres far heavier than the one she was officially placed in.
These women had one thing in common.Heavy music didn’t make room for them.They took it anyway.
FAQ – A RIP IN TIME: WOMEN IN METAL
Q: What is the Women in Metal Series (A Rip in Time)?
A: 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?
A: 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: Why are women important in metal history?
A: Women have played a critical role in shaping heavy music across multiple eras. From pioneering vocalists to modern innovators, female artists have expanded metal’s sound, aesthetics, and cultural identity while challenging the genre’s long-standing stereotypes.
Q: Who’s been featured so far?
A: 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: 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?
A: 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. - Road Riffs: Metal On The Map– We take metal beyond the speakers and onto the highway, exploring legendary venues, scene-defining cities, historic landmarks, local haunts, and travel stops tied to real
metal scenes around the world that every metalhead should experience.
Explore more from the series:
A Rip in Time: Women in Metal
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.