Review Summary: Into Otep Shamaya's tortured mind
Spooky season is on. For Halloween and the days before I’m going to review three of my favorite scary albums and continue my nu metal reviews. As I’ve often said, I love nu metal that terrifies and devastates me, and few can do that better than Otep.
Everything about her debut “Sevas Tra” makes you uneasy. The title is actually “art saves” backwards, but it sounds like a weird incantation, the insect-woman on the cover looks creepy, and the tense, dark mood of the music, Otep’s vocal performance and lyrics, always bring a knot to your stomach. Even the childish misspelling of song titles like “Emtee” and “Filthee” adds a strange, eerie feeling to the album.
Fitting then that the intro track is called “Tortured”, and sounds really uncomfortable, with its eerie instrumental, Otep’s uneasy, tormented singing and simple lyrics that are in no way descriptive but full of horrific implications about a traumatic experience she had when she was just 13. Her many traumas and general disgust at society are the main topics of the album, sometimes sung over some really heavy nu metal, and sometimes on quiet but creepier songs.
Otep’s sound would easily be classified as nu metal, but the riffs are a lot louder and deeper, and she growls as much as she sings, but the music can go so easily from quiet to heavy, the songs from 1 minute to 9 minutes long, that there is a real unpredictability to the whole album. For example, “My Confession” has a relatively quiet but tormented tone, suddenly turning into growled choruses before coming back to its soft verses, until exploding into the last verse where she screams “Shed my skin again, this will be my best revenge”. Other songs have this sort of changing, experimental sound, but that’s far from the only style on the album.
I’d say “Fillthee” is the typical nu metal song, and a very good one at that, with its fast riffs and fuzzy guitar effects, mix of rap, singing and screams, weird and unsettling lyrics about her evil alter ego who I guess appeared after years of abuse. “Blood Pigs”, the first full track and first single of the album, is a great example of the combination of heavy riffs, tormented singing and deep growls, which could be full of reverb, or just have a naturally cavernous tone. It proves that Otep are in the same category of heavier, death-metal influenced nu metal bands as Slipknot, and they’re a really good example of that sound. “T.R.I.C” sounds more like Rage Against the Machine, with its faster riffs, furious rapping and screaming and vaguely political lyrics about how the revolution is coming. You wouldn’t think saying that line in a sad, almost whiny voice would work, but it does. Meanwhile, “Battle Ready” is the purely angry, relentlessly fast, rapping and screaming version of “T.R.I.C”. It’s the kind of song that makes everyone go crazy when it’s played live.
Some songs mix the different types of Otep songs. “Sacrilege” blends darkly quiet verses and fast, angry rapping choruses, but with lyrics that criticize religious misogyny, with lines like “Woman is the Devil, your God is a fraud”. “Menocide” begins with noises before she screams “Kill your masters” and turns into a nu metal song about killing men, just the oppressive ones I guess. “Thots” does even more of that mix of styles, being a slow, creepy song where Otep reads a poem about oppression, war and inner torment, I think. Again, there are many layers of irony and hidden meaning to the lyrics, Otep (an anagram of “poet”) rarely tells you directly what she means and lets you fill in the blanks with the most horrible things you can imagine.
For proof of that, there’s “Emtee”. It’s like a more developed version of “Tortured”, beginning as a slow song with Otep whisper-singing vague lyrics about her childhood abuse, before the slow, heavy riffs come in and Otep repeats “Can’t keep this rage in me, can’t be this empty” until the end. But that’s not my favorite experimental song on the album. That would be “Possession”, where she invokes the spirits, muses and goddesses, over what I can only describe as ritual, tribal drumming. Then it turns into a faster, sort of thrashy nu metal song full of speed and rage. The “survive, alive, you are my enemy” chorus is now burned into my brain, just like the part where she growls the name of various goddesses.
But the longest, scariest, most unpredictable song with the rawest lyrics would be the last track, “Jonestown Tea”. From the beginning, the song disturbs you, with its repeated, oddly threatening instrumentation, and Otep feverishly recalling how she was raped as a young teen, and fantasizing about killing her rapist with poisoned tea. Otep’s best musical qualities, like her vocal versatility, the genuine vulnerability in her singing and her lyrics, are all greatly displayed there. To me, this is the perfect conclusion to the album (there’s a bonus track, which is not as impressive but still enjoyable). Legend claims that it was improvised in the studio, and absolutely impressed everyone who heard it, and I can absolutely believe that.
Did this album save Otep, and did it bring a revolution? Not necessarily, but it did introduce a really talented artist who was, at least for some time, one of the most interesting acts on the 2000s nu metal scene. Otep proved that there was some room for a nu metal band that was way heavier than Linkin Park, had a very varied sound and wrote interesting lyrics about all kinds of important issues. To Otep, talking about her emotional issues and her art is just as important as talking about her political issues, because art saves. She would make many other albums after this one, some that were pretty good too, but “Sevas Tra” will always remain my favorite.
