No album announcement, but they dropped a new single & video. I am all here for the rise of Horny Metal:


https://www.invisibleoranges.com/sonja- ... gle-video/

That's nice.
I liked Loud Arriver.

Pretty good tune, seems like they're leaning into everything they did on the first album and doing it more.

I’m always here for NWOBDSMHM. If this is as good as Loud Arriver, I’ll be quite happy

Great song and video, I love how playful and catchy the riffs are in that track. Sounds a lot like the debut album which is definitely not a bad thing.

I liked Loud Arriver.

Reminder that Sonja is opening for Wayfarer in the US starting in two weeks! That's going to be a killer tour.

I loved Loud Arriver!
This sounds great, I love the vocal approach. I'd love a full record of her singing like that.

Never heard of Sonja before but this sounds very similar to the slower paced Haunt material.

Saw them at a fest in Pittsburgh last year, good stuff. Good for them! Melissa writes some great riffs.

Skipping Michigan.

Nice!

That little hammer-on thing she does in the middle of the chorus riff is ridiculously fucking cool. I cannot stop listening to this song.

I didn't care for Loud Arriver very much, but this song is excellent.

Exactly! Loud Arriver is great. This seems to lean more towards the post-punk influence, which I'm all for.

I'm glad she's doing better than the rest of the former Absu members.

I also find it curious that there are not many traditional heavy bands that explicitly lean into the queer elements of the metal aesthetic (which have been there since Judas Priest and 80s glam, of which Sonja reminds me of).

Melissa's vibe here reminds me of a more modern, sensual, and queer take on what Betsy Bitch was doing, with the dominatrix/BDSM imagery and all. The branding is only part of it, though - Melissa's also just a lifelong heavy metal maniac who knows the power of great songwriting and strong hooks. I get the feeling that Sonja is going to go far, they have all the right ingredients and it'll just take one big tour to make them blow up.

Also, even though I'm stoked to catch them with Wayfarer, I still fully intend to punish the hell out of Melissa about Rumpelstiltskin Grinder because I miss that band and I'd like to see them come back someday.

I guess after so long in Absu some of Proscriptors rambling bullshit style must have rubbed off on her

Nice track though, not the type of stuff I'd normally go for but there's some cool riffs for sure. Still hoping for a Rumpelstiltskin Grinder reunion at some point

That's a fantastic blurb. It's really refreshing to see a new band with this unique of a vibe and aesthetic.

I mean... not really.

The 90s really did a lot to steer metal, and mainstream culture more broadly, towards a very heteronormative image of masculinity. Even as gay acceptance increased during the decade, it was often only for certain stereotypes of gay men - namely effeminate, weak, fashionable, etc. - while other people under the LGBTQ umbrella were often erased. It's not really surprising that many of those gay stereotypes didn't fit in with the hyper-masculine tough guy image that metal became so tied to during this time. This is despite appropriation of other aspects, such as the classic Priest leather fashion becoming disconnected from the underlying gay culture that spawned it.

It's also impossible to untie the lack of queer representation in metal from misogyny in general. That same hyper-masculine, heteronormative metal scene did a lot to repel women for an extremely long time. Even a lot of the 80s glam was still extremely hetero-coded, with sexualization of women (and often minors) being a pretty huge cornerstone of its imagery and lyrical themes. The rise of more extreme metal genres didn't help, with major death metal bands like Cannibal Corpse revelling in themes of sexualized violence. While there absolutely were prominent women in metal during the 90s and early 2000s, even in extreme metal, it's hard to get away from the fact that many of them succeeded despite the scene and its audience, not because of it... and pretty much always with the explicit permission of the men involved.

In that kind of atmosphere, can you imagine anyone openly gender nonconforming, trans, non-binary etc. being able to find any kind of significant visibility or success? Growing up in that era I can't name a single such artist that existed during that time - it's only in the last 5 or so years that it's really started to be a more visible thing, and even then it's definitely not mainstream.

Honestly this kind of imagery and representation is long overdue, and a major label like Century Media taking notice absolutely does reflect them adapting to a changing audience.

This song impressed me a lot more than I was expecting it to since nothing the band really did up to now moved me in any way. I really like the gothic rock undertones of this song and although previous material had some of that vibe, it wasn't as well executed as here. I will be intrigued to hear more material.

Case in point, that Winger song Seventeen really did NOT age well

Why not? It's great song.

Stewart, it's about diddling a kid.

80s glam was an interesting juxtaposition of dudes with teased-up hair with more makeup than Jeffree Star dressed in crop tops, cheetah-print leggings, and heels who also routinely used "faggot" and "queer" as casual epithets and probably would assault men for real or perceived advances.

Isn't age of consent in USA 16 years old?
Anyway, I just checked, main songwriters Kip Winger and Reb Beach were 27 and 25 years old when the song was released. It's not that much of an age difference.

I mean, he's not singing about trying to have sex with a child. That would be fucked up, of course.
Anyway, it's still great and fun song.

what went wrong in the way you were raised that you actually typed this out and put it on the internet on a public forum