Angels and Demons

Abstract Metal uses fantastical vocals, transcending everyday uses of the voice to instead invoke or incarnate aspects of the otherworldly, supernatural, inhuman, and more-than-human. Drawing on explorations of vocality by Nina Sun Eidsheim, this chapter argues that metal music’s basic illusion of heaviness often involves tension between “what the singer sounds like” and “who the singer actually is.” This dynamic of mishearing is especially consequential for non-male vocalists, whose performances are often either misidentified as male vocalizations, interpreted as gender-crossing or -betraying performances of masculinity, or associated with femininity and cast to the margins of the genre. Hudson reveals how this gender bias is inherited from the (raced) vocalities of earlier rock; recuperates the reputation of clean vocals by showing how they can contribute to heaviness; and then argues that women in metal today are creating new expressions of vocal femininity and challenging the genre’s masculinist framing at an unprecedented rate.