Brace yourself for BACKXWASH, heavy’s most exciting new voice.
Metal’s next evolutionary step may have just arrived courtesy of a trailblazing young rapper from Montreal
“I THINK GENRE lines are blurring all the time,” says Montreal-based rapper Backxwash. “Experimentation is crucial for every genre these days. I think back to someone like Screaming Jay Hawkins and wonder what it would be like to see a modern equivalent of that now and try and make it happen. He was melding all genres, never apologising for it, and scaring people at the same time.”
The conversation about what defines ‘metal’ has raged on since it was invented back at the start of the 1970s. Is metal just defined by a sound? Or can it also be defined by an attitude: an unwillingness to compromise yourself, no matter the cost? If the latter is the case, then Backxwash is the most metal artist you’ll hear in 2020.
“I started making music when I was 13 years old in Zambia,” she tells us. “I was really into R&B, then I heard [rap legend Notorious B.I.G.’S] Mo Money, Mo Problems on the TV and asked my sister, ‘My goodness, what is this?!’
She told me that it was rap. I had no idea what that was, so she told me that rap had two rules: you had to rhyme words and you had to say something important. That idea sounded so exciting to me, so I started getting into that music and making beats. I came to Canada when I was 17, and moved to
Montreal when I was 25, and that is when I started to discover more music. It’s a very experimental city, and it aided my growth greatly.”
It’s here that Backxwash – AKA Ashanti Mutinta – discovered heavier varieties of music, citing “black metal, death metal, industrial and punk” amongst others as key influences.
“Montreal is full of great artists,” she nods. “I saw some things I’d never seen before, things that took me a long time to be able to comprehend. From extreme metal bands, to noise artists just turning up at a venue with a synthesiser and making this sound that destroyed people’s ears.”
AS WELL AS
her musical evolution, it was around this time she also began the journey of self-discovery that led to her transitioning.
“I discovered more about my identity and embraced my femininity,” she continues. “I began to question more and more about who I really was.
I used those influences to construct a sound that expressed that feeling. Previously, my sound was more ‘straightahead’, but I really wanted to deeply examine what was happening to me, this process of evolution and self-discovery, and use music to tell that story through my eyes.”
That combination of soul-searching and musical awakening has resulted in one of 2020’s most exciting albums:
God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It. Despite clocking in at only 20 minutes in length, Ashanti has made a record that takes experimental hip hop and mangles it with cold industrial beats and dirty heavy metal riffs, all while spitting seething fury and heart-wrenching pain and confusion atop it. It’s a genuinely unique and stunning piece of art. It also packs some samples that will sound very familiar to card-carrying metalheads, including a certain, iconic
‘Oh please, god no!’ Ozzy wail from a Black Sabbath classic.
“When I first heard the Black Sabbath album, it was at a time when I was questioning a lot about how I was raised in religion,” Ashanti explains. “I really liked how metal bands challenged that. I find the bible to be a very apocalyptic book, and I’d listen to a band like Death and see the similarities in language and ideology in both of them; they actually complemented each other very well. So, I wanted to embrace all of those things and create this persona, like I was this arcane spirit. Like I was a witch.” She pauses, before adding: “Because that was how I was made to feel sometimes.”
It’s obvious that Ashanti’s experiences as a trans woman have heavily shaped her writing, and those experiences are writ large on God Has Nothing… Everything from her family’s reaction to her transitioning to the mental struggles she has faced as she
“EXPERIMENTATION IS CRUCIAL FOR EVERY GENRE THESE DAYS”
discovers her own identity have imbued the album with a sense of bitter melancholy, hanging just underneath all the noise.
“It was extremely difficult, and kind of sad, to write those lyrics,” she sighs. “These were thoughts that had only existed inside my head. I had tried to ignore them, so writing those lyrics, saying them back and trying to perform them wasn’t easy for me. I was going to write something political, like my previous albums, but it was feeling gimmicky and not reflective or where I am right now. I wrote the first track and it felt therapeutic, and it flowed out of me from then on. I felt I had to let everyone know what I was feeling, who I really am – these are my flaws, take it or leave it.”
It was a spark that has completely changed her creative outlook, meaning Backxwash’s next steps should prove to be even more introspective, and all the more fascinating as a result.
“I don’t think I can go back now,” she muses. “I think that this is going to be the way that I write from now on. I’m just going to get deeper and deeper inside of my psyche…”
With everything we’ve heard so far, we really can’t wait to see where she goes next. Prepare to be scared, prepare to be shocked, prepare to be exhilarated: Backxwash could just be the next evolutionary step metal’s been looking for.
GOD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS LEAVE HIM OUT OF IT IS OUT NOW