- PR Brown
- Justin Kier, left, Otep Shamaya, middle left, Aristotle Mihalopoulos, middle right, and Andrew Barnes of Otep.
Otep Shamaya is intense. As a songwriter, as the frontwoman of her synonymous metal band and as an activist, the California native has famously built a career around strident positions. Whether it's on LGBTQ issues, on veganism, on political agitation or on issues of social justice, you always know where you stand with Otep.
Take, for instance, her forthcoming album, Kult 45. On the lead single "To the Gallows," she motivates her base with "a song for the heretics/ to resist the dictatorship." She calls Donald Trump a "traitor" and a "morally corrupt demagogue" before grinding through this chorus: "Blood on your hands/ Blood on your suit/ Does your necktie/ Feel like a noose?/ We'll walk you to the gallows/ You can choke on the truth."
"I'm pretty fearless about confronting that which is false or misleading," says Shamaya, who describes herself as a "loud-mouthed lesbian radical" standing up for America's working class and marginalized groups. "Once we started to see all the traitorous things that Resident Chump started doing after being put in office—the trampling of our Constitution and our civil liberties—I knew I needed to write about what's happening."
Co-produced with guitarist Aristotle Mihalopoulos, Kult 45 is polished and professional while properly capturing the full Otep band's legendary live energy, which Shamaya calls "spiritual intercourse." Taking on gender inequality, rape culture, newly resurgent American hate groups, evangelical
