Genital Shame is the one-woman project of Erin Dawson from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Chronic Illness Wish is her first full-length album, after two eps released in 2023 and 2022.

Although a young project, Genital Shame has entered the black metal scene with a bang, playing shows and creating noise about the project which has reached us even before the release of the album. It’s a fact that some of the most interesting black metal music right now is being written by trans people, and Erin self-consciously includes herself in the category, even cheekily coming up with the black metal acronym TWBM (Trans Woman Black Metal) to label her project. A big part of the project is undoubtedly about openly being trans, and the songs seem to centre around personal experience and thoughts, with the last song of the album, for example, being the recollection of meeting drag queen icon Kerri Colby (has there ever been a black metal song about meeting a drag queen? well, now there is).

Musically, Genital Shame‘s black metal is very unique and experimental, achieving an impressive balance between melodicism and dissonance, aggression and retrospection, featuring rich harmonies between the guitars that are often “discussing” in counterpoint. There are also some very interesting instrumental passages like the synth-based “Hermaphroditic Image” or the acoustic guitar-based introduction of “I Met Kerri Colby“.

But Genital Shame‘s avant-garde qualities are mostly contained within her version of metal itself, constantly taking unexpected and original compositional turns, although strangely still managing to sound free-flowing and easy to follow. Perhaps it’s no use making reference to other artists when we are stressing the uniqueness of the project, but maybe a mix of Jute Gyte, Victory Over The Sun and Krallice, but more melodic and with a bit of an indie rock vibe, would serve as a sort of description.

There’s no question that Chronic Illness Wish is one of the most exciting debuts of the year and the coming of an artist we will be talking about a lot in the next years. We wish her the best.

⚔️ GENITAL SHAME ⚔️

BC: https://genitalshame.bandcamp.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/genitalshame/