Olivia Buxton

How goth rock singer Emily gave up the stage for the pulpit ...and the beer pump

FOR fourteen years, Emily Kollveit was a member of the Mediaeval Baebes, a sedate but sexy all-female classical music vocal group which has sold more than half a million records around the world. But when she was invited to swap her flowing robes for rubber and leather to front the heavy metal band Pythia, she seized the chance, along with the huge sword she brandished on stage. Emily spent eight years belting out songs like The Serpent’s Curse and Sword Of Destiny, releasing two successful albums and appearing at rock festivals around the globe.

Now this mistress of self-reinvention has adopted a new working outfit even more surprising than her earlier ones... a surplice and cassock as the soon-to-be ordained Deacon of St Mary’s Church in Primrose Hill, north London.

“I’m at my happiest when I’m up in the pulpit delivering a sermon or meeting parishioners,” says Emily, 44. “I have a real interest in social justice and I’ve always tried to work towards a place where there is more of an even playing ground for everyone.

“For me, it is very much about helping people to flourish and the church seemed like a really good place to do that work. It couldn’t be more different from the days in my heavy metal band Pythia when I had to dress up in armour and wield a sword.”

A talented soprano, Emily grew up in a mock Gothic castle in Cornwall, with her mother, wellknown artist Annie Ovenden, and was awarded a music scholarship by Andrew Lloyd Webber when she was 16.

“I didn’t have a Christian upbringing at all,” adds Emily. “My formative years were all about training in the arts before I became a musician and toured all over the world.

“But I had always had this interest in churches, particularly from singing in the Mediaeval Baebes as we spent a lot of time in them. Being in those sacred spaces seeps into your bones somehow. I became this real hippy chick with my crown of flowers and flowing white dress.”

SHE joined in 2003, and wrote many of their songs, performing with the group who had top 10 albums in the UK classical music charts. But in 2006, her career took a surprising turn.

“It was my birthday and I’d been having a few drinks when I received an email from a drummer saying he was a big fan and he wanted to start a new femalefronted heavy metal band and would I be interested,” she says.

“We put a band together and started writing our first album and I found an ability to stretch out my voice and take on that kind of alter ego. It was so much fun.

“I felt like a realWarrior Queen although I was banned from taking my sword on stage for health and safety reasons when they realised it was real.

“We played at Bloodstock heavy music festival in Derbyshire a few times and we played some really big festivals in Europe.

“We supported the Scorpions and they actually turned up backstage in their limousine, went straight on, did the gig, got back in the limousine and drove off again.

“Another favourite moment is when we went to Ireland to do a TV show and Meat Loaf asked us to support him on his European tour.

“But the dates didn’t fit our schedule so I went from being the happiest person you had met in your life to the most destroyed! The band went on tour with Jools Holland and we did some really traditional Gothic kind of stuff and even played at a private vampire party in Canada.”

In between Pythia gigs, Emily was still singing with the Mediaeval Baebes. And from time to time she took on day jobs to eke out her earnings from music.

But the one that led to another of her switchback changes of direction was as parish administrator for St John’s Church in Hackney.

“I saw an advert in a local paper, and it was almost as if it was in neon, flashing at me,” she recalls. “So I went for the interview, I got the job and that’s how I became involved in the church.”

For a while, Emily worked there and continued to perform in Pythia.

“I always remember how we had a visit from the archdeacon,” she smiles. “He commented on the leather armour that was hanging up in the office because I had gone ‘We had a visit from the archdeacon. He commented on the leather armour hanging in the office’

ROCK CHICK: Emily in heavy metal band Pythia and, right, with husband Are in the pub they run

straight from a gig to the church.” Her work there eventually led to a massive career change.

“I became fascinated with the church,” she says. “I got to work with the brilliant Rob Wickham, who is now the Bishop of Edmonton. Just by observing what he did and seeing what was going on, I completely fell in love with the Church of England.”

She has spent several years training Ripon College Cuddesdon, a Church England theological college in Oxford, at of to become a priest. “I am still training, so I will be a deacon for a year and then I will be a priest in training for another couple of years,” she says. “It is quite a lengthy process but it is a big job with a lot of responsibility.

“I am with people at the best and the lowest parts of their lives, so you need to have a pretty wide-ranging skill set.”

For the past two months, Emily has been based at St Mary’s Church in Primrose Hill. Her son Saxon regularly comes to the services although her Norwegian husband, Are,