Banshee (Artist Highlight)

Rachel Dorothea Knight aka Banshee is an American independent artist. She got into metal when she was 15 after seeing Lamb of God live. Inspired by them and Angela Gossow, she learned to scream using vocal coach Melissa Cross' videos.

Banshee is biromantic and asexual. In her local metal scene, she experienced a toxic relationship and a lot of sexual harrassment and abuse (and I think her asexuality made it even worse). This prompted her to move to LA, where she got into electronic music and producing. She considered becoming a hiphop producer but got too attached to her beats and decided to use them herself and add her own vocals to them. This is when she adopted the artist name Banshee from the Irish mythology. Her fanbase is called the Stanshees.

In 2020, she left her job due to concerns she had towards their COVID precautions and begun releasing her music on Tiktok and Spotify. As of today, her Tiktok (@bansheebby) has 594 900 followers and her Spotify has 421 000 monthly listeners.

She calls her music "fairy metal", which is a combination of witch house, trap, black metal and hyperpop. Here's how I see all those elements in her music:

- I'm not too familiar with witch house, but house is a subgenre of EDM which aims to be music people listen to in the club and dance to - made for big rooms, with lots of people in them. There's a lot of electronic music influences in her music and I'm guessing those are house music influences. EDM fans could probably give a more precise answer, with specific BPMs etc

- Trap is a subgenre of hiphop. Wikipedia says trap music "uses synthesized drums and is characterized by complex hi-hat patterns, tuned kick drums with a long decay" and I have no fucking idea what that means. But I recognize trap beats when I hear them and she uses them A LOT. She rarely raps but when she does, I'd say it's in the trap style - slow and simple cadence, emphasizing every word she says. Trap lyrics also tend to be quite straight-forward and to the point, and so are hers. She also has double entendres every now and then.

- Black metal is a subgenre of metal. It's considered an extreme metal subgenre among doom metal and death metal. Her screaming vocals are in the black metal style. Her production is sometimes high quality, sometimes intentionally low quality. Black metal artists want to create this image around them that they're these incredibly dangerous and scary individuals living and recording their music in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Even if they were actually normal people, living in a city, with a spouse and kids, a pet, in a corporate day job and wouldn't hurt a fly. It's about the image, they see portraying this image as cool, not actually being what you portray is perfectly fine. But because of this image thing, they often record their music with intentionally crappy equipment or make it sound "bad" in post production. They also tend to lean towards more "cold" and "metallic" kind of soundscapes. She also has a pseudonym, which is typical for black metal (and trap/hiphop). Lyrically, she's VERY metal as well. Across most subgenres, violence is one of the most common topics of lyrics. It is VERY typical for metal musicians to express the aggressive thoughts they've had through music and performing it (screaming, playing aggressively) instead of hurting other people or themselves. And that's exactly what Banshee's doing. She has this image around her, expressed through the production and lyrics that she's this female monster living somewhere, possibly not even on this planet, isolated from society, and if you try and approach her, especially if you're a man, she will fucking gut you and enjoy it. Where as in real life, she lives in LA and hasn't hurt anyone. She's even collaborated with male artists, she's not a misandrist. It's purely artistic expression.

- Hyperpop is an art movement where artists are doing pop music, but making it very self-aware and camp/over-the-top. Kinda like hipsters making pop music - "do it, but do it ironically". My favorite hyperpop songs currently are Dorian Electra's Gentleman (about the "nice guys" of the internet) and Graveyardguy's and Slayyyter's Final Girl (the "final girl" trope of horror movies, but with a twist). When she does clean vocals, she often modifies them with autotune, which is typical for hyperpop songs. Her lyrics are sometimes over the top to the point of being a bit campy and that's typical for hyperpop (as I already mentioned).

If you were to listen only three songs by her, I'd recommend Birth of Venus, Get me out of this club & Birth of a Banshee.

Birth of Venus is her biggest song thus far. It's very good in general, and I also think because the lyrics aren't as "in your face" with their violent feminist revenge fantasies as her songs are typically, that's also made it more approachable to people who aren't metalheads. The lyrics are Venus telling her own story instead of others telling her story.

Get me out of this club is one of her more EDM-leaning songs. I think it's also one of her biggest artistic achievements. It's about her having a panic attack on a club, wanting to get out of there. The vocals are drowned under the thumping beat much like they are when you try to talk to people at a club. The video has her as a mermaid - she looks like she's drowning, but luckily she can swim away. The lyrics say things like "I don't want to get drunk and I don't feel like worrying about a water cup" - she's not drunk, a lot of people around her are, and she's scared of getting roofied... YouTube video has the lyrics in description, if I remember correctly.

Birth of a Banshee is her own "origin story", in her own words (=how she got started with her music career).  It's one of her more metal-leaning songs. There's a lyric video on YouTube, and Spotify also has the lyrics.

Some other songs I want to highlight

- The Angel in the Sound is probably the most positive song she's got. It's about "an angel" who made her realize not all people are evil, there's good people out there.

- Executive Dysfunction. Very familiar feelings and thoughts as someone who has anxiety with these symptoms.

- Chamber is my favorite Banshee song. It's about how if you're romantically involved with someone, they assume their partner wants to have sex with them, but the partner doesn't necessarily (especially if they're asexual like Banshee).

- Fairy Metal - for the power metal fans out there!

- Swamp is a nice storytelling track. Check the Spotify for lyrics.

- Kill All Predators (feat. ZAND). 🖤 If you like aggrotech, or aggressive rap, check it out! It's great! As the name suggests, it's about "killing all the predators", but it makes you want to dance :D

- Death of a Predator. Banshee found out her rapist died, on the same couch he raped her on back in the day.

- Fix Me. About being asexual and how some sick people think it's a problem and sex with them can "fix" it.

- Fuck With A Witch. Banshee's first song. The "nice guy" speech especially stands out to me.

- If There Was A God You Wouldn't Exist. Simply 'cause that statement is so powerful.

- Picture This?! One of her catchiest songs. It's an another violent revenge fantasy, but I want to dance and scream along 😂

-Possess Me. Another one that's catchy as hell.

-Sirencore. The dichotomy between the "mermaid" and the "siren" is amazing, especially when you see the lyrics. I started a Lyrical Breakdown about it the other day months ago, but never finished it for some reason.

Some of my favorite lyrics

- "I will not be held responsible for how your body feels" -Chamber

-"Discount Ben Shapiro, nothing but shit out of your mouth hole" -Scum of the Earth

- Kill All Predators. All of the lyrics. So savage and empowering.

- "Sometimes I just wanna walk at night, feel safe in my body outside, sometimes I just wanna see the fuckin' moon, I don't want to talk to you." -Catcaller

- If I Don't Count To Six I'll Die, a short song about OCD.

- "You told me to jump, I asked how high are you right now" -I'm the Worst

- Catharsis is about a guy in his 20s going after teenagers (incl. Banshee) and gaslighting her, and then "How's it feel to be the one this song is about? But I don't mention your name once, 'cause no free clout". Burn!

- "I promised to stop writing songs about wanting to die, but you were in my dream last night" -U Were In My Dream (it's a heartbreaking song in general)

- "You just flap your lips, talk all your shit, you're nothin but a fan" -Men Are Trash (Wah Wah)

- "There's a dead fish on your profile pic, you think you're such a big man" -Men Are Trash (Wah Wah)

-"They always say 'Banshee, why do you do this to yourself?' But it's not my fucking fault, this is how I'm fucking built. At least I hurt myself when I'm like this and no one else." -they will always haunt me

- Worms has some nice, gory doubles. Like "crushed by the table as it turns" and "dump his guts out like a blunt".

- "I don't give a fuck, actually you suck" -Yes All Men

-"I don't care if you don't like me, bitch, that's not my problem. Just shut the fuck up, bitch, I'm telling your mom. Rawr!" -Yes All Men