Surgical Models, Paraphilia, Heavy Riffs: Meet Stoner-Rock Band Black Moth

You know it's a good show when there's a couple making out in the front row. At least that's how Black Moth vocalist Harriet Hyde feels about her band's recent appearance in London. "We've never seen people making out at our gigs before," she tells Revolver with a laugh. "I was quite proud!"

Tonight, Hyde and her band of Leeds-based rockers — guitarist Jim Swainston, bassist Dave Vachon, drummer Dom McCready and new guitarist Federica Gialanze — are backstage at Waterfront Studios in Norwich, England, where they'll play the second-to-last date of a U.K. tour in support of their forthcoming album, Anatomical Venus. The title is especially topical this evening: We're speaking with Hyde on the day after Valentine's. As it turns out, Black Moth celebrated the Big V in considerably less than high style.

photograph by Gobinder Jhitta

"We spent most of our day in a Wetherspoon, which is a chain of pubs in the U.K. that's kind of the like the McDonald's of pubs," she explains. "I think they had a two-for-one Valentine's special on the meal, so we had this kind of sad touring day because everyone was away from their partners. But the gig was amazing — there was a load of couples who came to spend their Valentine's with us."

In addition to her duties as vocalist and co-lyricist for Black Moth, Hyde is currently pursuing a master's degree in psychotherapy. "I've been training for nearly four years, and I'm about halfway through now," she says. "It's a constant inspiration. It's made me realize that everything I've done in life has been to get closer to understanding people and connecting with them. It's helped me even understand why I do this band, despite all the hard work it can be. It really is about communicating with people."

WHAT'S THE STORY BEHIND ANATOMICAL VENUS?
HARRIET HYDE Basically, I came across this book in a little shop near where I live. Funny enough, I was looking for a birthday present for my friend Jessika Green, who ended up becoming the co-writer for the lyrics on this album. So I found this book that had these incredible representations of these 18th century surgical models that were sculpted by artists, in theory, to teach surgeons about female anatomy.

But they were really, really artistic objects as well — to the point where they were unnecessarily dolled up and wearing fancy jewelry. Their expressions were very realistic, especially considering they're laying there with their organs splayed out on the table. Their expressions are either horror or elation or even orgasmic ecstasy. They're really strange objects to behold. So I bought the book for Jess but ended up keeping it for myself, so I had to buy her another copy. [Laughs]

HOW DID JESSIKA END UP BECOMING YOUR CO-LYRICIST?
She came round my house to drink wine and light candles, as we do. She had been having a bit of a poetic blossoming at this point in time, and I was knee-deep in my studies so I hadn't been writing so much. But this book inspired something in both of us. We felt like these models, these women, represented something about how we'd been feeling in our own personal journeys. At that point, we decided to pick women in the book and let them speak to us and give them a voice even as they're laying there as these very strange objects.

AS A RESULT, THE LYRICS ARE STEEPED IN FEMININE THEMES. IN THE PAST, YOU'VE TRIED TO DOWNPLAY THE FACT THAT YOU'RE A WOMAN FRONTING A BAND, BUT WITH THIS ALBUM YOU'RE EMBRACING IT AND TALKING OPENLY ABOUT IT. WHY DO YOU THINK YOUR ATTITUDE CHANGED?
It's a really good question. I think with a lot of women who play in bands, you get this kind of tired, worn-out response of, "Oh my god, I'm sick of being asked about being a woman. I just want to be treated as a musician." And that's true, but it kind of hit me along the way that women are still kind of an anomaly in the rock and metal world — to the extent that we're often referred to as a "female-fronted band," like that's what makes us stand apart. My experience is obviously my own, but on top of that is the experience of being a woman in a band onstage, and it occurred to me that that actually does bear talking about.

WHAT IN PARTICULAR DID YOU WANT TO ADDRESS?
There's something very different about the act of putting yourself onstage to be looked at as a woman. There's something very different about taking yourself on tour and all the different conditions involved. And also being in what is essentially a male environment. There are of course some incredible women around, but you'd be amazed at the same tired old things that come up in the rock & roll world. Rock & roll is still a very young part of cultural history anyway, and it's been through an awful lot in a very short time. It's not that long ago that the bands were the dudes onstage and the women were the groupies.

So we have come a long way in that sense — but when you look at festival lineups, there're still surprisingly few women in the bands there and when they are there, they tend to be the metal wench or sexy witch types. [Laughs] I think that's why I looked to a band like L7, who just did whatever they wanted and were not concerned with sitting pretty.

THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOU'VE WORKED WITH A CO-LYRICIST. WHAT WAS THAT EXPERIENCE LIKE?
Yeah, I've always done it on my own in the past, which is quite a solitary task. This was a very different experience, but I absolutely love working with Jess. She's one of my closest friends, so we're very much of a similar mindset anyway. We read similar stuff and are inspired by similar things, so it was amazing to have someone to work with in that sense. I'm proud to say that a couple of the songs on the album are just her poems, straight up. I just turned them into lyrics. She's really been happy about having her words out there in a different way as well.

WORKING WITH A CO-WRITER PUTS YOU IN A VULNERABLE POSITION, I'D IMAGINE. BUT IT'S ALSO VERY SELFLESS OF YOU TO LET GO OF CONTROL BY WORKING WITH SOMEONE ELSE. WHAT WAS IT LIKE BRINGING JESSIKA INTO THE WORLD OF BLACK MOTH?
I think there's a little too much ego in the world of rock & roll to begin with. [Laughs] The more you can diffuse that, the better. But it didn't really occur to me that it would be an issue until a couple of people said to me, "Are you sure you want to hand that over to somebody else?" But I'm very collaborative by nature. If I see people around us creating amazing things — especially someone like Jess, who is basically a sister — and we have a platform and outlet for that, I'm more than happy to share that process. And we both felt doubly inspired having each other involved. We helped draw things out of each other, which made it more than the sum of its parts. So it was a really positive thing for me, and I'm definitely interested in collaborating with more writers and musicians in the future.

YOU'VE ALSO GOT A NEW GUITARIST IN THE BAND. TELL US ABOUT FEDERICA AND WHAT SHE'S BRINGING TO BLACK MOTH.
Oh, she's amazing. It was sad when our old guitarist Nico [Carew] left because he's a really good friend of ours, but it was one of those things where he went off to focus on his solo stuff. Federica was the first person we tried out and we actually cancelled all the other auditions because she just fucking killed it. I didn't know her personally, but I knew of her because she plays in a local Black Sabbath tribute band called Rat Salad, so she was already legendary for just killing Tony Iommi's parts. She was also in a doom band called Centurion's Ghost and a thrash band called Hybris, so she had a lot of metal credentials that were probably better for us in a way because our old guitar player was more of a surf and rockabilly kind of guitar player. So Federica is a slightly better match for us, and it has been really nice to have another girl in the band.

YOU'VE JUST ANTICIPATED MY NEXT QUESTION …
Don't get me wrong — the boys in the band are absolutely my brothers. We've been making music together since I was a teenager. But there is something different about the energy with two women involved. Sometimes it's just really basic things like having someone to bitch about menstruating with. [Laughs] Usually, that's the kind of thing you're quite on your own with when you're a girl in a band!

photograph by Gobinder Jhitta

WHAT'S THE STORY BEHIND YOUR NEW SINGLE, "MOONBOW"?
"Moonbow" is one of the songs that came from one of Jessika's poems. It's an ode to the moon, really. It was something she wrote about a very personal experience, but she does have a lot of interest in Dianic goddess worship and Wicca, which is all based around the moon, which is historically a very feminine influence in the cycles of the Earth. So it came from a particular incident, but it's very much about getting in touch on a pagan level with femininity.

IS THE SONG "SCREEN QUEEN" A REFERENCE TO ANYONE IN PARTICULAR?
No one in particular, no. It's about digital technology and social media and people being attached to iPhones. One of the things I've noticed in my psychotherapy career is that Internet and social media addiction is a much bigger problem than people even realize at this point. It's not a very poetic or enjoyable subject, but it just felt like it's such a huge part of our experience today. And we really do want to be a band of 2018, rather than just writing about retro subject matters.

WHAT ABOUT "PIG MAN"?  IS THAT ONE ABOUT ANYBODY IN PARTICULAR?
[Laughs] No. "Pig Man" was inspired when I was reading a book by Jesse Bering called Perv. There's a bit of a running theme on Black Moth albums — we've usually got a song about paraphilia or sexual perversions. In our earlier gothic days it was more about necrophilia and things like that. Then there was "Looner" on the last album, which was about balloon fetishists.

My interest is in how paraphilia can be quite metaphorical about love and life, but this particular song was inspired by the witch hunts in New Haven and these guys called "Pig Men," which were farmhands or people who had been caught having sex with barnyard animals. The belief was that they were trying to spawn satanic offspring that would then bring Satan to Earth. Some of these guys actually got executed for it. It was a too good of a story to not do a song about!