Spiritbox defies misogyny & demands, ‘Circle with Me’

[Archived post; Written September 2021]

The case of Spiritbox is certainly a strange one, even by heavy music standards. Spiritbox formed in 2016 out of Victoria, Canada, from the last burning embers of metalcore jokesters Iwrestledabearonce, following the group’s dissolution just one year prior. Mike Stringer, the band’s secondary guitarist, and Courtney LaPlante, lead vocalist, decided to begin a new musical project of their own after feeling that there was much more to be achieved in their musical careers.

Spiritbox, the self-titled EP from the band, arrived in 2017 under the indie Pale Chord music label, showcasing a technical brand of djent-tinged progressive metalcore, all while LaPlante’s melodic clean singing and ferocious screams allowed the project to share one cohesive story discussing love, the pain of loss, and the ‘beauty of suffering,’ so to speak.

Gone was the parody and humor present in their previous band’s chaotic and often immature output; the seven-track collection was ambitious and boasted the polish present in the material of the biggest bands in the metal scene, yet, the project seemed to gain no traction outside of the band’s small fanbase that had followed Stringer and LaPlante from their previous outfit.

Three years into the band’s conception, the band had only played a handful of shows and had yet to even cross borders into the states under the Spiritbox moniker. But for Spiritbox, the outside success never seemed to matter; it was their love for the craft that kept them writing and experimenting with new aspects of their sound, all from the comfort of their home studio.

After releasing a string of electric and dynamic singles throughout 2019, the band struck gold for the very first time with the release of “Blessed Be,” the band’s envisioning of a melodic hard rock song, and “Holy Roller,” a brutal track that manages to terrify within its short three-minute duration, showcasing LaPlante in her prime, evilest form. “Holy Roller” proved to be the statement that the duo needed to ensure their place in the metal soundscape as it quickly topped the Devil’s Dozen countdown on Sirius XM’s Liquid Metal channel.

Seemingly overnight the international barrier was crossed and Spiritbox was on the tip of every metalhead’s tongue. Quickly soon after Spiritbox signed with American-based alternative music label Rise Records through their partnership with Pale Chord, and Courtney LaPlante quickly became regarded as one of the most enigmatic frontwomen in recent metal history.

However, as with all great success, it did not strike without struggle, especially through the perspective of LaPlante.

Despite LaPlante having been screaming since 2007 and having performed in a professional, touring band since 2012, the public rise of Spiritbox has found her facing a level of systematic misogyny on a very widespread scale. When questioned about the current status of female acceptance in the metal community in a Q&A session hosted by Pale Chord Music, LaPlante stated, “Well, I’ll tell you what. It’s been just as hard as existing as a woman in any community ever that is male-dominated because newsflash to all of you: it is trash. It is very trash having to deal with people invalidating what you do all the time just because you have a vagina.” Though, this is not necessarily new ground that LaPlante is treading. In fact, things have been this way since the very beginning of her musical exploration.

When reflecting on her foundational years in which she was first learning how to perform harsh vocals (screaming, growling, yelling, etc.) in an interview with Extreme Vocal Institute, LaPlante recalled, “It was met with general disgust because there is something so powerful and domineering about screaming which we mainly associate as a masculine trait. There’s no pretty way to scream,” she notes with a chuckle. “It’s very visceral; it’s very intense. A lot of people, men and women, they’re repulsed and almost threatened by a woman not just trying to have her most important thing be her beauty and being feminine,” LaPlante adds, “Which is so ironic because I love having long, pretty hair, fancy nails, and makeup; it has nothing to do with what being feminine actually is. All of us participate, it’s a performative thing we all show in different ways.”

Yet to so many new listeners in Spiritbox’s audience, particularly the large community of reaction channels on Youtube that have made names for themselves through reacting to their songs, Courtney’s appearance is always the first aspect of the band they comment on, always just after they hear her scream for the first time. It’s almost as if new listeners do not expect an attractive woman to be able to scream, although she is in a metal band; whereas when exposed to a metal band with a frontman for the very first time, screaming is not only normalized but expected.

From a traditionally masculine perspective, the entire WOW factor of Spiritbox is solely Courtney’s presence.

Mike Stringer, primary songwriter and lead guitarist of Spiritbox, has played in various bands with LaPlante since they were both teenagers in high school. Over the course of his musical career, Mike has observed much of the misogynistic behaviors targeted towards Courtney from a very interesting perspective: not only as her male band-mate, but also as her husband. “One of my favorite moments is when we played one of our first shows and one of the guys at the table looks at you [Courtney] and goes, ‘so like… what brought you into this?’” Stringer recalls with a chuckle. The look of frustration is immediately evident in LaPlane’s facial expression.

“And you’re like… what? What do you mean, ‘how did I get into it?’” she responds in a satirical tone, “I just heard some freaking heavy music, I said this is dope, and then I was like, ‘my parents don’t understand me!’ just like everybody else.” This is only one example of the all-too-common degrading comments Courtney regularly endures that belittle her career and artistic achievements. Considering that the band is very vocal about Stringer being the group’s primary songwriter in terms of instrumentation, it comes with no surprise when Mike reveals that people often ask, “‘Courtney, do you write your own lyrics? The guys are the ones writing the lyrics right?’”

Though these comments are harmless from the male perspective, they directly undermine all the work and dedication that Courtney has invested into building Spiritbox as not only a band, but also as a business entity. Its almost as if people don’t expect Courtney to be genuinely talented and capable, so their natural response is to pigeonhole her abilities into something that makes sense with what they perceive to be a more submissive, “feminine” role; yet, in reality, Courtney writes all of her prose and melodies herself.

However, such diluted statements from men and other outside parties are unfortunately not situational and are an example of the common micro-aggressions that all females in professional settings, including badass, metal musicians, have to endure.

The misogyny in the metal community has imposed such toxicity upon Courtney that it has bled into her creative process on many occasions, thus showing that even the most experienced and able frontwomen can subconsciously force themselves into submission due to the negative and the dismissive treatment in which themselves and their art has been perceived.

“When I was recording Spiritbox’s first EP, I was getting so frustrated when I was trying to record,” LaPlante explains, “I was just like, man, I just really don’t like the tone of my voice right now. I sound like a girl. And my husband [Mike] who’s in my band, said, ‘Courtney. Good! You’re a woman. Whatever you do, sounds like a girl. Anything you do, sounds like a girl. If you do the lowest low, you sound like a girl. If you do the craziest, black metal scream, you sound like a girl. And because that’s you doing it.’ And it really clicked for me. Like, yeah; why am I running away from sounding like a girl? I sound awesome!”

And it is LaPlante’s presence as an unapologetically feminine frontwoman that lends Spiritbox its unique and dynamic presence in the metal sphere, especially in comparison to their metalcore counterparts. While many bands in the scene share instrumental similarities in terms of having very guitar-driven music with an aggressive-leaning, driving rhythm section, no one approaches vocal arrangements quite like Courtney LaPlante.

LaPlante states, “In my mind, I always just do what is most appropriate over whatever musical part has been presented to me,” and that natural approach is what makes her art so endearing. In “Secret Garden,” the third single off of Spiritbox’s debut record Eternal Blue, she sings, “nobody waits for me, but I know; nobody takes from me what I grow; secret garden, disregard my heart,” in a sweet, ear-catching and almost poppy melody, as a distorted, chugging guitar riff adds an edge of darkness to her words.

While Spiritbox certainly has its tenebrose moments where breakdowns, dark imagery, and aggressive screaming propel their tracks forward (specifically the aforementioned “Holy Roller”), a distinctive aspect of their music is the fact that Courtney is not afraid to shy away from singing about her experiences as a female, despite the fact that a majority of their audience is male listeners.

In the second single off of Eternal Blue, “Circle With Me,” LaPlante again utilizes the juxtaposition between dark and light, and heavy and soft, in order to showcase her unique perspective as a frontwoman for a metal band.

“Negative feedback loop; I'm spinning out of control,” Courtney admits, expressing a sense of hesitance with her position in the spotlight before coaxing listeners to, “Feel the weight of a martyr; it could all be yours, if you echo birds of prey. Traitor, cut down the altar. It could all be yours, vultures circling the flame.”

Though LaPlante is aware that there is an audience ready and willing to listen to the art that she has to offer, she cannot help but feel reluctance due to her outsider status in the industry. Then just as the song comes to its climax in the form of a very crushing djent breakdown, Courtney comes into her power and demands her doubters forward, screaming, “I held the power of a dying sun; I climb the altar and I claim my place as God! Circle with me!”

In many ways, that lyric is the most adequate way to describe Spiritbox’s once-unlikely ascension into the spotlight. Very rarely do musicians get a second chance at achieving their dreams, and it is even less frequent if the band is Canadian, has a frontwoman, plays metalcore, and their youngest member is just shy of thirty (far past what is perceived to be ‘prime age’ in the metal scene). Yet, they have continued to defy all odds. There is a poignant resilience present within not only Spiritbox, but also every other female-fronted metal band that may have not had their moment in the spotlight quite yet. It is apparent in not only the phenomenal art they create, but also the greater conversations they facilitate within the metal sphere, and the efforts they make for ensuring women have a safe space to express themselves in heavy music.

“I still have to acknowledge the people that are drawn to all of our bands that have women in the band; it’s their [women’s] stories that are being vocalized: their lyrics and their experiences,” LaPlante states, “Sometimes, we accidentally step outside of our little bubble and into the world where people are really offended by my gender, or someone that presents as female, doing this kind of music. But more importantly, because those people will always be there, I think that a lot of us women have given our fans the tools to express why that is wrong. We see our fans educating those people, we don’t have to stand up for ourselves as much; they are having that dialogue because they understand now, the lightbulb went off,” Courtney explains, “ Of course mostly every woman understands what it’s like, but the metal world is predominantly men.”

Though female-fronted bands like Spiritbox have been around for decades, this is truly the first era in metal history where women have started to be widely celebrated, rather than chastised for following their passions.

Spiritbox’s debut record Eternal Blue dropped on September 17th, 2021 to immediate critic and fan acclaim, even landing the band the number nine spot on Spotify’s “Top 10 Global Album Debuts,” behind mainstream superstars such as Enrique Iglesias and Lil Nas X, a feat that would have been impossible to achieve by any female-led metal band even just five years ago. Though Spiritbox is spearheading the liberation of women in metal music in the mainstream, it is important to remember that there is plenty of work still to be done with dismantling the institutionalized misogyny in the metal world. Yet, we as individuals can help break down that foundation.

By supporting the female musicians in this space, we are arming them with the ammunition to guard and protect the generations of women in underground music that are to come. Share your favorite bands with anyone willing to listen, and don’t be afraid to facilitate conversations when imprudent, old metalheads try to degrade good art because it was created by a woman. Just as in any movement, it is simply impossible to achieve change without uplifting the powerful artists that give a voice to the neglected fraction of the community. Women in metal have always been around, and it’s time they get their deserved time in the spotlight.

Even as Spiritbox stokes their flame as mainstays in the metal scene, Courtney LaPlante will continue the relentless fight for her dream. As she once stated in an interview with The Pulse, “It doesn’t matter how old you look— it doesn’t matter when you’re a woman, no matter how much wisdom you maybe could be perceived to have in your field— you’re always just starting out.”