Why Metal? A Colorado Feminist Metal Collective Manifesto

Before the first meeting, before creating a social media page, I was plagued by a mixture of doubt and guilt. With what little time I have in which I am not working, or maintaining a life that allows me to work, is this a serious enough endeavor? Shouldn’t I be doing X respectable anarchist form of mutual aid?

Now, when I read the word “serious,” it appears to my eyes as “masculine.” What could be more worthwhile than supporting women, femmes, and queers? Any project that aims to support us is serious.

Then, why metal? I like metal. In fact, I love it. Simple as that. The global feminist revolution will be won by billions of women fighting for it in the realms they already exist in. Any space in this world is a patriarchal space. We will fight patriarchy everywhere it exists.

And does it ever fucking exist in metal. Anyone who can’t immediately clock the sexism baked into the fabric of the scene is either in deep denial or active excusal. Yet, it continues to astonish how rarely any metal artist is ever even held to the slightest standards when it comes to their sexist behavior. At the risk of getting some stupid comments, here are a couple of greatest hits from the recent past:

• Members of Gloryhammer/Alestorm call black fans racial slurs while discussing how they view fucking women as an activity similar to catching Pokemon. As of writing, Alestorm has nearly 500k monthly listeners on Youtube Music.
• No female artists make the Top 10 most streamed metal artists of 2025, according to Loudwire. However, Attila made the list, whose top song asks “Who’s the faggot now?” and instructs listeners to “rape the pit.” Falling in Reverse, somehow classified as metal, makes the list and is fronted by sexist transphobe Ronnie Radke.
• The media, redditors, and academics are still debating if lyrics that revel in the details of rape are sexist or not.