Otep
Destroying Pop Culture, One Mind at a Time
2007-08-07
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Otep Shamaya is a woman who knows how to speak her mind. Like a pissed-off Sibylline Oracle she tells it like it is, with no apologies to whoever may happen to disagree. “The record industry is cannibalizing itself; record labels are cannibalizing themselves; the bit-torrent people are cannibalizing themselves; and who suffers are the fans and the artists,” she mused recently in an interview with Synthesis. Our interview happened to fall on the date that The Ascension — Otep’s much-anticipated third album — was originally supposed to be released, but the band was abruptly dropped from the Capitol Records roster less than two weeks before the album’s release date. Understandably she took the open opportunity to vent some of her frustration.
“Starting out I was pretty naïve about the whole record industry. I didn’t really know how it worked,” she said. Soon, however, she quickly learned the sad truth of the matter. “It’s run by people who aren’t artists; they’re rigid, and they’re dinosaurs. They’re fossilizing in front of our faces because, what, they’re [frightened of] the Internet?” she questioned. “It’s insane. Everything is crumbling around them, and they know their days are numbered.
“Both sides can argue and point fingers and all that shit, but when executives get fired they get paid this grand amount of money to leave; artists are stuck with projects they’ve worked two years on, and we’re just sitting here waiting for someone to get back from a vacation to decide what our fate is,” she said. “I started writing this record on a plane, going to Ozzfest 2004. With what I have emotionally invested in this album, it’s beyond frustrating to sit back on something that I’m so proud of, that I believe is the best work I’ve ever done, and have labored and toiled over it, to have it at someone else’s beck and call. It’s infuriating.”
When asked if her political stances had anything to do with her band’s current plight, she candidly replied, “We’re a strange band to understand for people who have a very limited resource for thinking outside the box. Under the last regime at Capitol Records, we suffered greatly by their ineptitude and their inability to break a sweat, let alone break a record. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I’m very outspoken. I’m not one of these little bubblegum cheerleaders.
“People are socialized to understand their place in this world. If you want to see it in action just go to a toy store and see what toys are for girls and what toys are for boys. When you travel the country you see what images and so forth are portrayed to people, and then they start wearing the clothes or cutting their hair or listening to the music, or whatever they’re fed. For us this is about challenging that dominant paradigm and letting people understand that they don’t have to wear the cultural costume they’re given — they can be themselves, and celebrate that.”
As listeners eagerly await the new record (“as soon as corporately possible” was as close an estimate as Shamaya could provide for an actual release date), Otep and Co. have already embarked on an extensive US tour with Static-X to promote their new material. At the time of this writing the fate of The Ascension remains in corporate red-tape limbo, and for now the only way fans can hear the new songs is to see the band live, which apparently is a transcendent experience that must be witnessed firsthand to be grasped.
When asked about her onstage “ritual,” Otep talked at length about her motivations and inspirations.
“I was raised in a really religious household, and one of my guilty pleasures is reading about ancient history — to read about the Greeks and Romans and the pagans in my own Irish ancestry, and how they performed their rituals,” she said. “They would go into these religious frenzies. When you’re in this mass of people all of a sudden you’re kind of speaking with one voice and it’s all one mind, and yet you’re still you, and it’s just this weird sort of emotional catharsis that occurs. For some people who are perhaps emotionally cut off, this gives them a chance to feel something. It’s an amazing experience — it feels like birth, death and resurrection every night.”
Otep is known for having some of the most dedicated and loyal fans in the music world. “You can’t fuck with our fans — they inspire us everyday, every show. It doesn’t matter if there are 5,000 or 50 people in front of us; the people that have come to see us are almost religious in their fervor — it’s a frenzy of Dionysian proportions. We’re inspiring people, we’re motivating people, and I think that’s what art is supposed to do: provoke, inspire and motivate.”
“Starting out I was pretty naïve about the whole record industry. I didn’t really know how it worked,” she said. Soon, however, she quickly learned the sad truth of the matter. “It’s run by people who aren’t artists; they’re rigid, and they’re dinosaurs. They’re fossilizing in front of our faces because, what, they’re [frightened of] the Internet?” she questioned. “It’s insane. Everything is crumbling around them, and they know their days are numbered.
“Both sides can argue and point fingers and all that shit, but when executives get fired they get paid this grand amount of money to leave; artists are stuck with projects they’ve worked two years on, and we’re just sitting here waiting for someone to get back from a vacation to decide what our fate is,” she said. “I started writing this record on a plane, going to Ozzfest 2004. With what I have emotionally invested in this album, it’s beyond frustrating to sit back on something that I’m so proud of, that I believe is the best work I’ve ever done, and have labored and toiled over it, to have it at someone else’s beck and call. It’s infuriating.”
When asked if her political stances had anything to do with her band’s current plight, she candidly replied, “We’re a strange band to understand for people who have a very limited resource for thinking outside the box. Under the last regime at Capitol Records, we suffered greatly by their ineptitude and their inability to break a sweat, let alone break a record. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I’m very outspoken. I’m not one of these little bubblegum cheerleaders.
“People are socialized to understand their place in this world. If you want to see it in action just go to a toy store and see what toys are for girls and what toys are for boys. When you travel the country you see what images and so forth are portrayed to people, and then they start wearing the clothes or cutting their hair or listening to the music, or whatever they’re fed. For us this is about challenging that dominant paradigm and letting people understand that they don’t have to wear the cultural costume they’re given — they can be themselves, and celebrate that.”
As listeners eagerly await the new record (“as soon as corporately possible” was as close an estimate as Shamaya could provide for an actual release date), Otep and Co. have already embarked on an extensive US tour with Static-X to promote their new material. At the time of this writing the fate of The Ascension remains in corporate red-tape limbo, and for now the only way fans can hear the new songs is to see the band live, which apparently is a transcendent experience that must be witnessed firsthand to be grasped.
When asked about her onstage “ritual,” Otep talked at length about her motivations and inspirations.
“I was raised in a really religious household, and one of my guilty pleasures is reading about ancient history — to read about the Greeks and Romans and the pagans in my own Irish ancestry, and how they performed their rituals,” she said. “They would go into these religious frenzies. When you’re in this mass of people all of a sudden you’re kind of speaking with one voice and it’s all one mind, and yet you’re still you, and it’s just this weird sort of emotional catharsis that occurs. For some people who are perhaps emotionally cut off, this gives them a chance to feel something. It’s an amazing experience — it feels like birth, death and resurrection every night.”
Otep is known for having some of the most dedicated and loyal fans in the music world. “You can’t fuck with our fans — they inspire us everyday, every show. It doesn’t matter if there are 5,000 or 50 people in front of us; the people that have come to see us are almost religious in their fervor — it’s a frenzy of Dionysian proportions. We’re inspiring people, we’re motivating people, and I think that’s what art is supposed to do: provoke, inspire and motivate.”
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