Boring Girls(45)

When they finished, the three of them grinned at each other.

“That was great,” Socks said. “Sorry I had a couple little screw-ups here and there.”

“Nah,” Edgar replied. “That was amazing. It’ll be even better when we go through it again.”

“You’re amazing, Fern,” Socks said.

She smiled. “Thanks. It was a bit sloppy, but I’ll nail it.” She looked over to me, and I smiled at her. “What do you think, Rachel?”

“I hope I can do it justice,” I said, trying to infuse my voice with confidence.

“Let’s run through it again,” Edgar said. “Can you join in, Rachel?”

“Yeah.” I stepped up to the microphone. I ruffled the papers in my little lyrics book, completely horrified. Not only had I seen how amazing this band was going to be, but I was also about to prove to the three of them that I had no place in it. I felt Fern’s eyes on me and I looked up at her. She nodded. I looked away, totally betraying my nervousness.

This time Socks counted them in, and I tried to remember the structure of the song. I opened my mouth during the intro and let out a growling wail, surprised at how loud it sounded coming through the speakers. The three of them looked at me, Edgar breaking into a giant grin, Socks nodding in approval, and I stretched the shriek for as long as I could. Fern smiled and rolled her eyes, as if she had known all along that it would be okay and I was silly to have worried. But as the song rolled uncontrollably towards the first verse, I knew there was still time for me to completely fail at this. My eyes flicked down to the lyrics. It was one thing to roar during an intro, it was another thing altogether to make it through a song in pure growling shrieks. I pictured Balthazar Seizure in my mind, and Marie-Lise, and took a deep breath.

Riding through the night on blackened wings

Singed with blood and vengeance, hear the angels sing

It wasn’t perfect, and I missed my cues a few times, and Edgar messed up during the bridge, but Fern nailed her solo perfectly. To this day it’s pretty much the exact same song as it was that first time we played it. We played that song over and over again that afternoon, changing things here and there, making suggestions to each other. By the end of rehearsal we pretty much had what ended up being “Blood on My Fist.”





SEVENTEEN


We started rehearsing every weekend, and I knew I was impressing them with my vocals. I listened to music non-stop at home, always putting on DED and trying to emulate Balthazar’s voice as best I could. He really was the best vocalist of all the bands I listened to, never overdramatic with his growls, never drawing out a roar for too long, knowing when to back off and let the music become the focus, knowing which parts to emphasize, which lyrics to highlight by taking the edge off, and even allowing himself to regress back into a whisper at times.

A lot of other vocalists made mistakes, I thought, and had no dynamic. Some of them would go over the top to the point of sounding ridiculous. Some would draw out a roar until it almost sounded like a burp. Some would add too many random growls and totally dominate the song, which detracted from it. Balthazar never did these things, which made him distinctive, and that’s why I tried to work with the same style he did. At rehearsal I relished when the others would smile as I allowed myself to start with a whisper and escalate to a shriek, and as I would accent as opposed to overpower what they were doing musically.

One afternoon at rehearsal, we were sitting on the couches in the rec room. We’d been working on a few new songs and now had four to run through. Socks put on a CD by some band none of us had heard of: there was a guest vocalist on one of the tracks that he wanted me to hear. Her name was Annika. Apparently she was from Norway and did guest gigs on a bunch of different metal albums. I was curious to hear another female metal singer.

The music was mediocre, but I straightened my back and smiled to myself as I listened to the song. She wasn’t any good, allowing her voice to get carried away and dominate the song. It was almost as though she was trying to exploit her voice, to emphasize the novelty of having a female vocal in a heavy metal song, and it was annoying. I congratulated myself for not making the same mistake. Yes, it was going to be unusual for a metal band to have a female singer. But I wasn’t going to attempt to draw attention to it in the way that this Annika did. Colostomy Hag was going to succeed, or fail, on its true musical and lyrical merits, not because of the presence of females in the group.

We finished listening to the song and were still relaxing on the couches when Socks commented, “We got a pretty unusual band here, don’t you think?”