Within Temptation, Lacuna Coil. Does Blackmore's Night count? Actually, I don't know if any of these technically count as metal. But I like them anyway.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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Oh man, right now it's Spirit Box, the Warning, Castle Rat, Crypta, Lizzies, and of course Unleash the Archers. Eleine can't be forgotten, even though they're not in heavy rotation for me. Kittie is in that same range where their most recent album is just old enough that it's fallen out of heavy rotation for me
If you wanna step to more of a hard rock end of things, Halestorm is awesome.
If you consider Linkin Park in the same category, Emily has been killing it (but any asshat that whines at me about that is just getting blocked because it was a stupid fucking thing to begin with), so they would deserve a mention even though they aren't historically a female fronted band, and folks love to argue about them being metal at all.
Going back, Lita Ford rode the line between hard rock and metal, as did Joan Jett. Both from the Runaways which was the all girl hard rock band. Vixen may have been better barely hard rock, but they deserve more respect than they get.
That's just the stuff that's in my main playlist of harder rock and metal right now. There's a ton of great bands out there that are woman led.
And hell, you can't really talk about that without at least giving a nod to Doro Pesch, and even Wendy O. They stand out among some of the earlier examples
But, right now, there's so many good to great bands that are female led, or even all women. It's an embarrassment of riches.
UNLEASH THE ARCHERS. By far my favorite band.
Way too far down. Saw them in Charlotte last year with Powerwolf, my favorite band lol. Phantoma is just such a good album front to back
Their last three albums have all been amazing. I saw them live a couple of years ago, and they have such an incredible stage presence simply due to the amount of skill and talent they all have.
Lita Ford
Arch Enemy is another one.
Doomsday Machine (https://tidal.com/album/51971329?u) great album.
If you like them The Agonist is a good band in the same vein. Alissa White-Glutz fronted them until she left for arch enemy and was replaced by Vicky Psarakis
Acid King
Witch Mountain
SubRosa
Bloody Panda
Couch Slut (more hardcore/noise)
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undead corporation and imperial circus dead decadence
- Coven
- Girlschool
- Early Bolt Thrower
- Boris
- Corrupted had an incredible female singer some years ago
Just off the top of my head, probably forgot a lot of great bands.
Visions Of Atlantis has two singers, male and female, with the female being the lead. I forget their names, and I know a quick google search would tell me, but I'm having trouble balancing this message and the steering wheel, plus this bowl of soup is REALLY hot.
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Closet Witch
Sylvaine
Frayle
Cellar Darling
Tristania
After Forever
Just to name a handful off the top of my head.
Gotta mention Spiritbox. Courtney is one of the most celebrated modern metalcore singers.
She absolutely deserves her flowers though, people who can switch from beautiful cleans to hatefully-heavy screams are crazy talented.
Their new album is pretty damn great too, glad they stuck the landing on the sophomore LP.
Lots of great bands here already, and some new to me! One of my favorites I haven't seen here is Spiritbox... Courtney Laplante reminds me of Angela Gossow and Tatiana Shmayluk, she has the nice clean vocals as well as the super gutteral growl.
My bits:
Amaranthe
Angtoria
Cinnamon Babe
Dorothy
Nightwish
Venus 5
I discovered Brutus a few weeks ago. Stefanie Mannaerts is the vocalist and plays the drums simultaneously. The power in her voice while smashing the hell out of her drums... incredible. I was blown away when I saw a Video of her performance and realized it. What Have We Done is probably my favorite.
Nightwish.
Favorite release: Once (https://tidal.com/album/186100020?u)
Imaginaerum is a fun album, Scaretale and the first half of Song of Myself are great.
In This Moment
I used to love them when I was little, then forgot about them for a decade. They've only improved over time.
Stolen Babies is a long time favorite too, I love Dominique Persi
Theatres des Vampires is also fun
The Birthday Massacre of course
Unleash the Archers, many good ones but I really like the album Apex and especially Shadow Guide and The Matriarch
A Sound of Thunder, Queen of hell and A Sound of Thunder might be my favorites but many greats imo
There's a ton of great women in metal, I'll drop two.
Mares of Thrace, Calgary AB based sludge/post/hardcore 2 piece, guitarist/vocalist is part of the original lineup, it's heavy and catchy.
I really like Hulder, black metal solo project, some of her early demos are amazing, this version of Into The Crypt of Rays comes to mind, got a wall flag of the art from this in my office.
The Breeders kicked fucking ass - Kim Deal went on to form the Pixies but her first project is absolutely worth a listen as well.
Fuck yeah Crypta. Fernanda has a monstrous stage presence.
Sadly I just read that JΓ©ssica di Falchi (guitar) left the band the other day.
I really like Nao from Maximum the Hormone, a Japanese metal band.
Great drummer, great voice, and she is hilarious. Her banter with Daisuke on their radio show they used to host was god damn hilarious.
Recently, Oceans Of Slumber, great combination of beauty and brutality
I also discoverd a few months back Haydee Irizarry from Aversed and Carnivora, but I can't find any recent stuff with her (at least in metal) which is sad since she seems to be a talented vocalist and musician
But also a good bunch of bands : Jinjer, Kittie, ETHS, Crypta, Stolen Babies, anything with Anneke van Giersbergen
I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot since I only thought about vocalists (Gorod, for example, had a beast of a female drummer on their early albums)
In addition to the bands already listed I wanted to add:
Burning Witches is an all female Swiss heavy/power metal band. I found them while listening to Dio covers.
Frozen Crown is a female fronted Italian Power Metal band.
Volturian is a female fronted Italian symphonic metal band.
Arkona - the best folk metal Hulder - great black metal
Iβll be seeing Arkona again in < two weeks!
Maria Brink and In This Moment
The drummer from Maximum The Hormone has some awesome vocals. I can't find a clean video for this song, but you can skip to 3m40s to see her sing and drum https://youtu.be/rhCdOXGehSg
Sorry if this doesn't qualify as metal. It's pretty mixed.
Anna Murphy (ex-Eluveitie, Cellar Darling) is probably my top metal hottie
Iβd like to recommend the 2 plasmatics albums; βCoup dβEtaβ and βMaggots: the recordβ.
Maybe not exactly what people are here for but iβd be remiss if I didnβt mention these amazingly heavy albums.
Wendy O Williams was and will forever be the queen of anarcho punk rock.
Too bad she decided to leave, but it was her way to go.
Some faves of mine I haven't seen mentioned yet:
- Castrator (all-female band, death metal)
- Nervosa (all-female, thrash)
- Cerebral Bore (brutal death metal, slammy)
- Abnormality (tech death)
- Walls of Jericho (metalcore)
elveitie: the call of the mountains
After my teenage years it's been very rare for me to dig into a band deeply enough to learn anything about their members, so the easiest examples are all going to be women doing clean vocals, which is the one time you can (usually) explicitly tell the difference just by listening. Some of my favorite examples are Liv Kristine's work in Theatre of Tragedy, Tarja-era Nightwish, the first Stolen Babies album, and Sirenia's first two albums along with all of Tristania's discography pre-Rubicon.
I have two examples that immediately come to mind outside clean vocals:
Samantha Escarbe is the guitarist for Virgin Black and my understanding is she essentially splits the songwriting load with Rowan London. The Requiem stuff I still need to give more listens, but I think the first two albums are absolutely spectacular music. In "Museum of Iscariot" she does one of my favorite guitar solos I've ever heard.
Angela Gossow's vocals on Arch Enemy's "Wages of Sin" album are some of the absolute best in metal. I live for that shit. I never really got into anything else Arch Enemy did though.
The lead singer canβt sing anymore so they broke up. But Unsun was great.
I always liked this Faye Wong song. Not hard enough to be metal, but I think it's still edgy and kind of haunting.