Body Void: Music is Community
Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth, the first release for BODY VOID under Prosthetic Records, is a four-track odyssey of punk revolution, sinister soundscapes and harsh noise, and crushing doom riffs. It’s a phenomenal release, but it’s the lyrics and influence behind the songs which are even more impressive than the musicality itself. We sat down with Willow Ryan [guitar/bass/vocals] to talk white supremacy, queerness and political activism in the wake of one of the most vital releases of 2021.
“We were looking for a new label home after our last couple of records, we just wanted to work with someone with a bigger platform. And a lot of our friends were on Prosthetic already – Tanya from BISMUTH, KW from VILE CREATURE – they were really enthusiastic about their experience on the label.”
Willow smiles when talking about her Prosthetic family. “Becky and Steven have been amazing. I couldn’t ask for anything better!” But it goes further than just the record label – fans of underground metal the world over cheered when BODY VOID was finally signed. Community and support like this is important to both the underground community and the queer community – and for the tiny cross section of queer fans of underground metal, it’s essential.
Unfortunately, the most pertinent example of this community coming together stems from a journalist making casually transphobic comments on Twitter – leading to an outpouring of support from and within the crowd to ensure that trans people in metal will always be welcome. “It’s really the part of music that matters to me the most. Being part of, not just the underground music scene, but the queer community within that. It’s why I keep going with it when things get harder to bear. For me, music is totally about community,” Willow explains. “Without the band there wouldn’t have been a space that felt right for me, not just to come out but to explore my gender, so BODY VOID will always be a vehicle for my exploration of queerness. Even if our latest record didn’t so much touch on specifically queer issues, but it does touch on issues that queer people tend to be really passionate about – environmentalism, white supremacy and colonialism. And I guess I hoped and still do hope that this band can be a place of solace for queer people, and a place of safety, even though it’s very angry and dark. I still hope it’s just this entity that can feel comfortable and cure people, and that’s the part of the community that I’m thinking about when I’m making music.”
It’s something completely inherent to BODY VOID’s music. I was utterly compelled from the first listen of this album, and fell in love with the textures and sounds and themes, before later on down the line, finding out that it was made by a queer person. “I’m glad you say that! The band’s called BODY VOID and I’ve always wanted the sound to be kind of a reflection of a trans or queer person’s sense of their own body. It’s a topic that comes up a lot for us in our art – body ownership, or this sense of discomfort. I’ve always wanted our sound to reflect that as this kind of visceral living organism.”
In this most recent album, the Earth itself is characterised as such. For an album all about environmental collapse at the hands of white supremacy and colonialism, personifying the Earth in this way is a masterful move. “A big change in the way I think about the Earth and the climate has been the connecting of it not just with myself but with humanity on a personal level – personifying it. Not drawing this line that we do so much in modern society, separating ourselves from the Earth. Specifically the song Fawn is about this – it’s this horror story about trying to deny that natural aspect of ourselves. We’re kind of hellbent on separating ourselves from it but it’s like an inescapable reality. In the end, it is like our dominant progenitor. Denying that has taken us in this catastrophic direction.”
Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth is a remarkably ambitious album, packing in topics like the climate crisis and colonialism and white supremacy. It was also injected with a sense of urgency as it was recorded during the summer of 2020, where it seemed like the entirety of the globe was protesting the murder of George Floyd.
“The whole album was initially just going to be about the climate crisis but I hadn’t finished writing all the lyrics yet. When we went to record the riots had just gone into full swing and the third precinct in Minneapolis had just been burned down. It was impossible not to take stock of what was happening around us. The song Forest Fire was a kind of reaction to certain people who were willing to just stand by and pretend that this had nothing to do with them. And Pale Man is more of a historical look on how we got to this point. Specifically, how this is a manifestation of white supremacy, which our history is fraught with. It felt unifying when I was writing about these topics; climate change and white supremacy aren’t distinct issues. To me, it was an album really about the US and especially during that time in 2020.”
Despite all these heavy and challenging topics, and the extremely noisy and abrasive ways in which they are portrayed, the album never strays into despair. “It’s just not interesting to me. To stand on the sidelines and do nothing is such a privileged position. And especially as a queer person, I don’t have that privilege. And there’s so much metal complaining about how fucked up the world is; I find it kind of nihilistic. Even at its most pessimistic, this album is saying, I will go down and I will die fighting for these things and this Earth. That’s what the title’s about – this is the only earth that we have, and and even if it does crumble and collapse, I will still be here, we will still be here. Because we have no choice. Because it’s our home.”
Beneath This Rotting Earth is out now via Prosthetic Records.
Like BODY VOID on Facebook.