Astarte

Astarte, whose music is best described as black metal with overtones of goth metal at times, are a rarity: an extreme metal band that has had all-female lineups. Extreme metal, which includes death metal and black metal as well as metalcore, has been very male-dominated; the vast majority of extreme metal bands in the United States and Europe have never had any female members. But Astarte are an exception to that rule, and they are also one of the more melodic bands in black metal. While many black metal (and death metal) bands have favored brutality and harshness for the sake of brutality and harshness, Astarte have offered a more musical and nuanced approach; their work is intense, hard-driving, and forceful, but not without a strong sense of melody and harmony. Originally known as Lloth, Astarte were formed in Athens, Greece, in September 1995, when bassist/guitarist/keyboardist Maria Kolokouri, aka Tristessa (who subsequently took over on lead vocals) joined forces with guitarist Nemesis and lead singer/guitarist Kinthia; Tristessa (whose name means "sadness" in some of the romance languages), Nemesis, and Kinthia are women, and the formation of an all-female black metal band was certainly unusual in the mid-'90s (and no less unusual in the late 2000s). Another thing that was surprising about Astarte in the mid-'90s was the fact that they were Greek; the death metal/black metal field was dominated by the Scandinavian countries in the '90s (many of the important black metal bands have been from Norway), and Greece was hardly the first country that came to mind during a conversation about either black metal or death metal. Employing Psychoslaughter (who had played with a Greek metal band called Invocation) as a session drummer, Tristessa and her colleagues recorded...