It's been a long time since Lee Aaron was crowned the Metal Queen. The list of women in her court of jagged pop is colourful - you could list Lita Ford, Joan Jett, (and their original group The Runaways), Orianthi, the Wilson sisters of Heart, the Deal sisters from The Breeders, Vixen, Courtney Love, L7, Amy Lee, etc. - but it isn't long compared to men.
When you drill deeper into the hardest side of rock and strike metalcore, the list gets even shorter. There are notables, certainly, like Vicky Psarakis of The Agonist or Alissa White-Gluz and Angela Gossow of Arch Enemy, Maria Brink of In This Moment, Kobra Paige, Girlschool, Otep Shamaya, Priya Panda of Diemonds, Lzzy Hale of Halestorm, Tarja Turunen, and a number more (a case could even be made for Tanya Tagaq). Compared to men, though, the ranks are thin.
Prince George's Kaija Kinney is becoming one of those names, and she is especially loud at calling forth the Amazon rockers. Folk music has the Wyrd Sisters, but she is all about the wired sisters, the ones who rage and rampage on the metal stage.
Kinney plays in the band Anarcheon, but she is also the primary organizer of Metalocalypstick, the only known festival in Canada dedicated to female metal.
"The whole fest is about supporting women in music, encouraging them to get into heavier genres, but also showcasing the women in metal," she said from her Vancouver home. "You're seeing it more often now, but there's probably one woman for 40 or 50 men."
She was a singer already, and played the acoustic guitar in an alternative rock band. She might have carried on that way had it not been for some timely intervention.
"It got to a point it wasn't fulfilling me, and I knew I really wanted to go into metal. I was not encouraged at all to go into metal, people were not supporting that idea, but I met my bassist Sylvain Maltais, and he was the first person who ever wanted to hear me sing like that."
They located guitar player Clayton Bach and drummer Steve Ricardo. Anarcheon was born.
She went looking for opportunities to play, especially playing to their edge of having the frontwoman. She could find very little outlet for females in the genre, but it had always been that way. That's how she almost missed metal altogether.
"I would say, it was something that was always kind of missing," she said. "I was never exposed to it by family or friends, but I picked up a random CD one day and it just hit me. When you're an angry 12-year-old and don't know what to do with your life, it can speak to you."
She still remembers the album: Unhallowed by Michigan death metal band The Black Dahlia Murder. "And I still listen to it."
Kinney is attuned to how little opportunity girls get to see other females in metal roles. All-ages shows are the best, in her view, because what women there are out there on the stage can't be seen at all by the up-and-coming girls if the gig is at a bar or starts late.
What she doesn't face is opposition. The lack of female presence in metal is subliminal, systemic sexism not deliberate oppression, she said.
"From the guys I have never ever had a bad experience. They are surprised sometimes, but nothing bad.," Kinney said. "I've heard from others that there are people out there somewhere who say women don't belong in metal, but there are so many good people in the metal scene that those people are kinda told to shut up."
Kinney has a daughter who is interested in music. She doesn't want her daughter to face the same lack of knowledge she faced in her younger years. She got her daughter into a program called Girls Rock Camp run as a not-for-profit organization throwing a chord to kids with rock dreams.
Parenting also played a role in why the festival got started at all. Kinney wanted to show her daughter the best experiences in the metal scene, and the only way to do that was to create one from scratch.
"It's definitely a full-time job. I've been in business for a couple of years, and once you own your own business, do that, then you feel better about what you can do. But I was trying to find female metal festivals I could apply to, I couldn't find any, so that made me think hmmm."
This is the second annual Metalocalypstick Festival. It will be held this year on the Canada Day long weekend in the Lone Butte community near 100 Mile House. Eighteen acts are scheduled so far.
She now has one already under her belt, had she obtained some informative help in how to start then operate a successful metal festival. The co-founder of the Metallion Festival, Prince George's thunderous metal show each summer, was a constant resource and supporter of her venture, she said.
"I've known Brad (Foster, the drummer for local metal band Deveined) since we were five years old," she said. "I picked his brain before I started mine, he answered a lot of my questions, I'm sure I bored him with all my questions, but he really helped me get it going."
Tickets for the 2017 event are on sale now via the Metalocalypstick website or at the gate.
