Bleed the Pigs: political powerviolence "dream team"

Photo courtesy of Bleed the Pigs

Bleed the Pigs, a sludgy grindcore-powerviolence band from Nashville, Tennessee are a four-piece force to be reckoned with. Starting out as a two-piece with a vision in 2013, the band gives a ferocious voice to statements that are typically shut down and shunned. 

“The idea behind the band was to create intense, heavy and fast music that matched the intensity and aggression carried through by the lyrics,” says guitarist David Hobbs.

“I love having control over something that's typically white male dominated,” says Kayla Phillips, vocalist, on performing their music live. “I especially love it when black girls come up to me after a show and say that they felt safe being there because I was there. That's really important.”

Prior to Bleed the Pigs being formed, Hobbs had played with drummer Taylor Carpenter and bassist Christian Smith in another band for over a year, and describes their songwriting process as both easy and “pandemonium.”

“Taylor, Christian and I will jam on certain concepts for songs and Kayla always keeps us on task and focuses our direction. Sometimes songs come easily and the riffs just flow one after the other, while other times we spend a lot of time sculpting how the song will sound in the end,” he says. “All of our songs, though, are carefully scrutinized and altered substantially before being played live.”

“I’ll tell them certain things that I like, a faster part here, or a sludgy part there. It comes really easy. I think we’re a dream team,” says Phillips.

Their EP, Mortis Fatum, is tight and cohesive, using slightly different styles of metal on particular tracks to convey a message as hard and heavy as the sound. Songs like “Endless Void” and “May” are reminiscent of black metal like Gorgoroth, whereas “Scum Fucker” is a righteous shove to rapists. "I know what you are- a worthless piece of shit," snarls Phillips over furious riffs.

Photo courtesy of Bleed the Pigs

The band is influenced by a grab bag of other grindcore, hardcore, powerviolence and metal bands, including Neurosis, Converge, The Endless Blockade, Hatred Surge and Yautja, as well as Phillips’ favorite, Nirvana.

“They’ve been my favorite band since I was 10 years old and I still feed off of them,” she says.

Non-musical influences include Smith’s dog, Tyler Coburn and George Orwell. Aside from naming him as an individual influence, Smith cites his pet as his dream co-headliner on tour, next to Dave Grohl.

The band loves crowd interaction during shows, and the opportunity to "convey as much passion and intensity as possible,” says Hobbs, in addition to "getting to play loud and live and get pissed off and vent all the pent up aggression towards daily injustices. The whole endeavor is just a wash of emotion and excitement and passion… Beyond that, I just want to have fun and play hard.”

“My favorite part about performing live is seeing people head bang,” says Carpenter. “I want everyone in the whole room to be head banging.”

You can listen to their music on their bandcamp: http://bleedthepigs.bandcamp.com/ and check them out on Facebook.

Ladies, speak up- society's distortion of "nice"

We teach girls shame: Close your legs; cover yourself. We make them feel as though by being born female, they’re already guilty of something. As so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who have to silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think….And they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form. – Chimamanda Adichie

It feels like almost every move I make, there’s someone telling me I’m being too aggressive, too weird, crazy, asking for trouble, that I need to tone it down. Which is funny, because every time I’ve done something to be called “aggressive,” “weird” or “crazy,” it’s literally just been me being myself and thinking I deserve respect for being a person. All of my female friends who are similarly independent have dealt with similar adversity for similar reasons. And I don’t want to cause “trouble”—I just want to be understood and respected. But things aren’t that simple.

The truth is, most people do not want or like independent women. The same reasons for which people have called me “aggressive,” “weird” and “crazy,” guys my age would be called ambitious and assertive. They’re “going places.” I was about to re-affirm that people don’t like independent women, but let’s cut the bullshit: they don’t like women, period. So they tell us by standing up for ourselves we’re weird monsters, and they’ve fed us this gnarly idea about being “nice.”

“Nice” means, as most girls have probably realized by their early teens: don’t talk too loud, let guys cut across you, don’t disagree with guys, never tell them they’re wrong (it would make them feel bad!), don’t do anything to make guys uneasy, don’t say no when a guy asks you out, especially if he made a romantic gesture (that would be mean!), laugh it off and be flattered when you’re being objectified and degraded, and generally make yourself as easy to deal with as possible, especially for guys, and never stand up for yourself.

Spelled out like this, it’s easy to see how dehumanizing and sick this. When I think about it this way, I realize I have to intention of being “nice” in the way that many people think about it. Yes, I want to cause trouble for them: they cause a world of trouble for my sisters and I, and it needs to end.

My girlfriend pointed out to me recently that I speak so quietly a lot of the time that she can’t always hear what I’m saying. She’s right, and I started thinking about why I do that. I started thinking things like, Well, I don’t want to talk over people. I don’t want to be rude. But why the hell is me speaking at an audible volume being rude? It’s part of the internalized misogyny I’ve absorbed- that I should be sitting down and shutting up. But that’s wrong. Women’s place is in the revolution—we are not a product to be sanitized and commodified.  My role is not to be easy to deal with. My role is to call you out, sit you down, and rise up with my sisters to create a new way of thinking. Where women aren’t “bad girls” or made to feel ashamed for being humans with their own views and judgment calls. And it’s not just for next generation—as Kwame Ture said,

“I don’t think that we should follow what many people say, that we should fight to be leaders of tomorrow. Frederick Douglass said that the youth should fight to be leaders today. And God knows we need to be leaders today, ‘cause the men who run this country are sick, are sick.”

Black power has always resonated with me and is more relatable to feminism than many would have you think.

So, do I dress a certain way to bother people? No, and I’m tired of people being selfish enough to assume it’s about them. It’s not. Do I sit around thinking, damn, how can I piss off the most people? No. I gather information, do research and then form opinions. Ladies, we need to stop taking shit and letting them distract us. Speak up, stand up and define “nice” for yourself. I'm right here with you.

A teen girl's (late) response to "Getting Over Girl Hate"

As a teenage girl and obvious feminist, internalized misogyny is a very straightforward issue that is clearly damaging for all involved. So seeing an article titled “Getting Over Girl Hate” with the premise of advocating love for other girls and fighting female competition, I was pretty stoked (even though the article is from 2011). However, like with most even remotely mainstream publications trying to cover issues I care about, I was massively disappointed.

Aside from the article being written like it’s just about petty high school drama, the serious problem for me in the article was where she said: “Look: confidence is not a crime. It does not mean a girl is a bitch or a slut, or thinks she’s better than you. It just means that she likes herself. And personally, I don’t wanna live in a world where any girl with healthy self-esteem is labeled a whore.”

Does she not see the obvious, glaring problem with that sentence? Did she really not realize that she just participated in “girl hate” by using gendered, misogynistic slurs? By separating “sluts” and “whores” from “girls,” she’s participating in slut shaming, female competition and disrespect towards other women. She’s saying that “sluts” and “whores” don’t deserve respect like “other girls” do. This majorly disappointed and frustrated me.
There’s a real name for “girl hate,” Rookie. It’s called internalized misogyny, and you just participated in it.

If the writer had followed the statement with something like “The word “slut” is a patriarchal construction to shame women for their own sexuality, and to insure they are harassed for being remotely sexually independent” or even an immature but well-intended statement like “There’s nothing wrong with being a slut” I would have been okay with it. But she didn’t. Because she isn’t actually promoting “girl love” here. This is not solidarity, this is not empowerment, it’s even more “girl hate” covered up by the pretense of “feminism” and caring about other women.

So please, stop trying to co-opt feminism for your own crappy, slut-shamey, misogynistic beliefs. Just know that the real fighters, including myself, will always side with the “sluts,” the “whores,” with the ladies that you don’t consider part of your feminism or worthy of respect. Because we are worthy. We are all sisters. So if you’re going to pretend like you believe in it, either start acting like it or just drop the act. When you decide to actually walk the walk, I'll be ready to hear about it, but until then, keep your fake support.

In solidarity,

Brit-El