We sat down with Jo and Larissa of Venom Prison at Download Festival to talk about how being female-fronted challenges heavy music and what it means to be the heaviest band on the lineup, at the UK’s biggest heavy music festival.

A contested opinion maybe, but their unique take on death metal is unlike anything else over the weekend, and they are arguably the heaviest young band to make an appearance.

Let’s get the basics out of the way first, what does it feel like to be on the lineup for Download? “It’s massive and it’s so cool to play in between so many amazing and massive bands,” Larissa says. When Larissa speaks, it’s almost hard to imagine the furious intoxicating power that she holds on stage. She is exceedingly polite, rather softly spoken, and has an infectious laugh that bubbles out through the silver hair covering much of her face as she picks at the grass seed that mottles the grass we’ve sat down on.

There is a quiet fierceness to all the members of Venom Prison, but Jo has the kind of defiantly funny air that makes him instantly likeable. “Technically I can say I shared a bill with System Of A Down,” he says enthusiastically, the sentence almost jumping out of him. You get the feeling he could talk for hours if given the chance. 

As well as being one of the most extreme bands on the lineup, they are one of the few featuring a female member. Challenging stereotypes across the board has received some resistance, but the band is quick to defend the scene’s acceptance of them. “I think everything is progressing and evolving. You can see that women have a place in metal and people don’t mind it at all,” Larissa says. “There are still shitty people, but there are always going to be shitty people. You just deal with it as and when it arises,” Jo adds. Larissa laughs back, “Like that show in Vienna!”

“We’d been on tour with Darkest Hour, and we played our last show, and some guy that had been at the show came up to Jo first and said ‘oh you took your top off, you don’t have any muscles to show them off’.”

Jo chimes in, “I was like, ‘uh yeah’, but this guy was like buff. And he was like ‘why did you take your shirt off?’ and it was like ‘because it’s fucking warm!’ He didn’t really get that, and then he turned to Larissa and…”

Larissa cuts in, “he basically said he didn’t like the band because I’m a female vocalist and that’s not his thing. I just argued with him and said if you hadn’t seen me you wouldn’t have known that I’m a woman. He just kept saying that he wasn’t sexist and we almost punched him.”

The way they speak over each other bubbles with what feels like a secret joke, as they are finishing each other’s sentences the story is uniquely shaped by their dual memories. Larissa acknowledges that it happens a lot, more than you would expect, with people not realising she is a female vocalist.

“When we did those interviews with That’s Not Metal, and when they were reviewing the album as well, they didn’t know that I was a woman.” Jo interjects, “I don’t think that they knew when they were doing the podcast. I do find it quite interesting, people’s reactions, because a lot of the time when people come up to you and are like ‘I had no idea your vocalist was a woman!’ It’s just like ‘okay, it’s barely a thing, but okay!”

Their attitude towards women in metal is refreshing, to them it’s not something special to have a female member, it’s just how it is. But to the rest of the industry, it’s boundary challenging and inspiring. Finding young women who have the confidence to get on stage and challenge a predominantly male space is exciting. Bands like Venom Prison are giving girls of the future more choices when they consider roles in music. “I think we just bring something fresh into metal. All the hardcore elements, the groove, something that not every metal fan is familiar with, but they seem to enjoy,” Larissa says.

From taking the traditional things that metal, especially death metal, is based upon lyrically and applying her own perspective, Larissa has pushed the door open for extreme music from a female perspective. It was already open, but Venom Prison have flung it wide and shouted through it, “we just don’t care”.

“I wouldn’t say it’s much different to Cannibal Corpse singing about killing someone rather than me singing about cutting someone’s genitals off. It’s just from a different perspective; it’s based on revenge, and I think a lot of people actually like it. There are obviously those dickheads who don’t, but we just don’t care,” Larissa laughs.

Jo counters, almost as the voice of reason to Larissa’s devil-may-care statement, “I think a lot of people are kind of okay with it in a way, because rape is very real thing, and if someone can hear this song that is about rape revenge, maybe they’ll take some power from that. And that can only be a good thing.”

We couldn’t agree more and we’ll end on a few more words of wisdom from Jo, because this isn’t just about women, it’s about changing the scene for everyone. “Because of how sexist heavy and extreme music is, women in that scene, well actually just not-men in that scene, should be celebrated.”