“I’m not talking about the cosmos or the spheres of madness. I’m talking about being in a spa and crying”, says Genital Shame’s Erin Dawson. Her ambitious second album Wellness Plan sees the musician deepen her diaristic songwriting while composing songs that push the boundaries of black metal further than ever before.
Words: Christina Wenig
There was a term commonly used around the release of Genital Shame’s first album, 2024’s Chronic Illness Wish: queering black metal. It is a multilayered descriptor, not only hinting at Erin Dawson’s existence as a transfeminine person in a genre traditionally ingrained with hypermasculinity and cis-heteronormative ideals (the micro scene title TWBM/trans woman black metal was jokingly tossed around between her and contemporaries like Lust Hag). It was also a statement of intent, a promise to break the rigid artistic rules of a genre more enamored with conformity and conservatism than it likes to admit. “That term is a succinct-ish way to talk about what I’m trying to do musically, which is to get as close to breaking something as possible without it shattering”, Erin says. Just listen to Wellness Plan’s quasi-album opener Down Titration Strategies, and you will know exactly what she means: These techniques, these harmonies and moods are deeply atypical for black metal. But what is this genre if not subversion, heresy and rebellion – even against itself?
Coming from a background of classical guitar and composition studies as well as a deep appreciation for virtuosos like Yngwie Malmsteen and Devin Townsend, Erin’s approach to songwriting and composing is formed by an understanding of music theory and technical skill that many genre purists will find off-putting. All the more reason to use it. “I think music theory gets a bad rap. It is a boogeyman among some musicians. But in my understanding, music theory doesn’t tell you what to do – it tells you what you can do, and I love options in life and music”, she elaborates. “I don’t have that much interest in being super primitive. Sometimes I will put on an Immortal record and think I need to be more like this. But I want Genital Shame to be fresh. If you want primitive black metal, there’s so much of that in the world. I’m tripping on it on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night because these primitive black metal bands are everywhere. It’s all umami out there, and I’m trying to put some lime and cilantro on it, just a little freshness.”
The head and the body
That doesn’t mean Erin Dawson doesn’t find inspiration or new impulses in the metal scene: Playing her songs in front of metal crowds for the last few years, the musician has developed an understanding of the difference between music you experience in your head – the way she tends to do – and music you experience in your body – something she witnessed when seeing her The Flenser labelmates Chat Pile play. Gratitude Meditation, one of the standout songs of her new album, shows her descending deeper into the primal, visceral, corporeal with a steam hammer groove that has already become somewhat of a live favorite. “People like groove, people like syncopation, people like to feel music in their body, which is easy for me to forget. Most of the time I feel music in my head and am looking for clever counterpoint tricks or harmonic modulations that make me believe in God. I’m not very percussive in my music; I don’t think about riffs rhythmically that much, which is something I want to change. It’s easy for me to forget that metal specifically is a type of music that is supposed to literally resonate in your chest. So, it’s nice for me to look up through the hair covering my face and see people bobbing their heads.”
Wellness Plan leans further into this organic metal groove with an actual metal drummer, John Kerr of Minneapolis melo-death band Majesties, replacing the programmed drums of Genital Shame’s previous releases. The result is warmer and less strictly on the grid, but it’s hardly the biggest change noticeable on this record. Listen to tracks like Down Titration Strategies, Punished By Rewards or Górecki Peace (an homage to Henryk Górecki’s Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs), and you will hear the distinct whir of synthesizers cutting through the riffs – an addition with a specific purpose: “I think of it two ways. One is that I really like the sound of them. I like the heavy glide proggy synth – the amount of time that it takes one note to gliss into another, that slow rise”, Erin explains. “But I think the most interesting answer is that I’m using synths because, while screaming, I lack a melodic function. When I write this music, typically I’m writing melodies that don’t translate to voice, and the guitars are just playing chords. So, the synths are solving the problem of ‘How do I preserve the melody that I had in mind here?’ I don’t like using the guitar as a lead guitar in this project very much. In the song Nuclear Accumbens Atrophy, there are two shreddy moments, and those are pretty much the only ones on the record. I think a very proggy synth just fits this way more than whammy worship.”
The literal and the metaphorical
As Erin elaborates, it’s become more important for her not to just release collections of songs but to look at records as artistic units with clear throughlines, “univocal statements of purpose”, as she says. This approach affects her songwriting and sonic aspirations but also, maybe most of all, her lyrical content, which, while always having been deeply diaristic and confessional, reaches a conceptual level on Wellness Plan. As it turns out, the medical and therapeutic language she employs is not merely metaphorical or symbolic. (I Want To Die Before You was inspired by microscopic footage of white blood cells searching for viruses to fight – a reminder that even if your will to live is broken, there’s something inside you fighting for your existence; that you’re programmed to survive.) “Wellness Plan comes out of a therapeutic concept that was new to me. It’s kind of bleak, so I’ll be a little vague”, the musician reveals. “We all have bad thoughts, and I was really interested in this idea of listening to those thoughts and taking them to their logical conclusions. Before doing that, I wanted to get on this sort of plan, and the idea is that you set the goals of this plan so unachievably high that you never go through with the thoughts that initiated the whole thing.” Fittingly, she sings “I replace what I’m after” in the album intro of the same name.
In the wider context of suicidal ideation, song titles like Suicide Wellness Plan and Gratitude Meditation seem almost cynical – like a comment on an individualistic wellness culture that tries to tell you that you can just meditate your way out of depression. It’s a crooked, often self-deprecating sense of humor that doesn’t seem to be lost on Erin Dawson: “Spice Loam, the third song on the record, is just about eating dirt and being nice to myself by seasoning it at least”, she says with a dry chuckle. “A lot of these songs are about punishing myself for something I did. I remember going to a sensory deprivation tank and thinking about something my therapist said to me, which is that to live in this world and to be in relation to others means hurting people that you love. I was meditating on that and thought, if that’s part of the deal, I don’t want it. I don’t want to live in a world where hurting someone who loves you deeply is part of it.”
Wellness Plan translates these ideas into songs that mirror the multifaceted, complex nature of existence: There’s, above all, furious tremolo picking and a constant ebb and flow of intensity and speed; there’s the lullaby-esque nature of Spiced Loam, the compelling dissonance of I Want To Die Before You, Suicide Wellness Plan dissolving into noise and birdsong, the deconstruction of Gratitude Meditation into a one-minute feedback break, the brooding synths of Punished By Rewards and Outro Goodbye (I’ve Left It Open) – to just name a few. It’s a celebration of artistic freedom and integrity. While Genital Shame’s music is evocative of the heady intricacy of Liturgy or the unbridled ecstasy of Agriculture, another artist Erin tends to find herself looking to is Devin Townsend, a musician full of untraditional and ambitious ideas and approaches to music. “He published this series of podcasts that I come back to all the time. He’s so clear and peaceful, and such a brilliant articulator of the creative process”, she says. “One thing that he talks about a lot is the idea that you don’t know what an album is about until after it’s done, after you’ve signed your name to the painting, and I think that’s true for me. I always knew Wellness Plan was about that plan that I was discussing in therapy, but it’s actually about not wanting to participate in a world where you’re guaranteed to hurt people who don’t deserve it. Genital Shame is a diaristic thing for me. I’m not talking about the cosmos or the spheres of madness. I’m talking about being in a spa and crying.”
