Bared teeth, stigmata, kneeling on popcorn kernels to pray; breaking noses, chewing off heads, oh, and a fuck ton of blood: Welcome to the world of Witch Fever.
A project in exorcising demons and turning trauma into something galvanizing and hot-blooded, the Manchester, England, four-piece — which includes vocalist Amy Walpole, guitarist Alisha Yarwood, bassist Alex Thompson and drummer Annabelle Joyce — split the difference between doom, post-punk, queercore and noise rock to create a blistering wall of sound with just enough hooks to ensnare those not typically tuned into heavy music. Having supported My Chemical Romance and comfortably playing to a crowd of tens of thousands, Witch Fever are aimed for the stratosphere.
Walpole and her band are out to combat a world that has tried to shrink them, and their weapon is sonic violence. On their debut full-length, Congregation, Witch Fever take on the ultimate symbol of patriarchal oppression: God. Largely based on Walpole's traumatic experiences growing up in the Charismatic Church (a Christian denomination focused on "the baptism of the Spirit"), the album's evocative anti-hymns reclaim biblical language as an act of power. It's the ultimate act of expulsion.
"Christianity doesn't scare me, the Bible doesn't scare me, but the people who use it to control people scare me," says Walpole. "It was never faith that was an issue. It was organized religion and the way that men used that to control mass groups of people."
Speaking over a Zoom call, Walpole doesn't talk with the veneer of a rock star. She's humble, soft-spoken, transparent. You can tell she has self-respect, total agency over herself, firm boundaries. She's coming into this interview a little hesitant. "Sometimes I come off interviews and feel like I've been in a fucking therapy session," she explains. "People can ask questions that they really, really, really fucking shouldn't."
Walpole is also forthright about resisting the pressure to be a spokesperson for social or political causes; a pressure, she's found, that is specific to people of color and non-binary and female artists. "There is definitely an expectation on these kinds of artists to educate, be completely transparent and to be a commodity," she says.
Following a smattering of blistering singles and last year's Reincarnate EP, which challenged dainty feminine stereotypes, Witch Fever have previously been labeled "feminist figureheads." But Walpole rejects that title. She doesn't want to be your role model — or thought of as perfect. She wants the space to be messy. "It's assumed that if you are women and non-binary in a band you have to be making a statement … and it can't just be for fun." If anything, Walpole simply wants to be a figurehead for fun. She's been through too much shit to be otherwise.
Walpole grew up in West York, near Bradford and Leeds, a typical mid-Aughts English emo kid. Her favorite bands were — you guessed it — My Chemical Romance, Billy Talent, Paramore, Evanescence. She wore studded belts to school and often donned a trilby hat and waistcoat. ("Fuck," she says, thinking back).
Walpole, it seems, has always possessed a quiet defiance. "I never got in trouble at school," she says, "but I could be kind of gobby if a teacher raised their voice at me. I wasn't having it."
At 13, she joined her church's band and sang before an audience for the first time. She was soon reprimanded for singing too loudly, drawing attention to herself. Walpole eventually left the church at 16. "There were a lot of things that led to me not wanting to be there," she says. Her parents left the fold soon after, "but that's not my story to tell."
I ask how old she was when the doubts began. "Twelve," she says firmly. This doesn't surprise me. It's a number that comes up multiple times in Walpole's lyrics. ("Your blood got on my clothes and now I'm 12 years old," she sang on last year's single "Initiation," while on the new album, there's quite literally a song titled "12.") "Yeah, I do repeat, and I think that it happened by accident," she says. "I feel like I need to say lines several times, and I guess it is like a purge..."
While early pagan religions integrated sexuality into religion via fertility rites, Christianity has tended to exploit and vilify carnality. It's no coincidence that many who become part of a kink community as adults come from religious backgrounds. Today, kink figures plenty in Witch Fever's visuals: leather, spiked collars, as well as themes of finding salvation through pain and servitude. "I think it can make for beautiful imagery ... like, Catholic imagery is so beautiful," says Walpole.
On the roiling album opener "Blessed Be Thy," she bastardizes religious sentiments of retribution and shame, and screams in a biblical cadence, tearing beauty to shreds. "I grew up listening to all these fucking horrible old men preaching at me and using biblical language … Now it's like, Fuck you, this can be my language now … Men use [those words] to control people, so why wouldn't we take them and use it for our own benefit?"
The Charismatic Church of Walpole's youth didn't exactly share the same opulent aesthetics as Catholicism. "It was disgusting," she says of the dusty, rancid-smelling events center, walls lined with baby-blue colored linoleum, where the churchgoers would congregate. (Walpole references these details on Congregation's slow-burning standout "I Saw You Dancing.") "It makes me feel really sick thinking about it," she says, grimacing. "It was so shit."
Walpole finally found a sense of catharsis when she began performing in a slew of metal bands at age 19, before studying at Manchester University, where she wrote a thesis on modern depictions of female possession. She met Thompson, Joyce and Yarwood soon after through mutual friends. Walpole describes herself as the anxious one, the bandmember who needs the most emotional support. "But … I'm kind of the mom sometimes." Walpole is sober and has been her entire life. "I would see friends doing it growing up, but I was never interested," she says. "Plus, I've had mental health issues my entire life and it's so important for me to keep on top of that." Thompson and Yarwood, she adds, "are little menaces sometimes," who'll go out to party post-show, while Walpole and Joyce will tend to head back to the hotel early.
Playing in a male-dominated scene, Witch Fever experienced sexism from early on. In 2018, a local publication in Bristol (where the band had just played) reported that they were grabbed and jeered at by a particularly rowdy crowd. "I think there wouldn't be a need to have a political agenda if heavy-music scenes weren't just big boys' clubs," she says. "It ended up that I couldn't not stand on a stage and talk about it."
Witch Fever's gig supporting My Chemical Romance at Stadium MK in Milton Keynes earlier this spring is by far the band's biggest and bougiest show to date; a far cry from the grim, green room–less venues they'd been used to playing. "When we got offered it, I was like … fucking amazing, let's go do it," she says. "I walked onto the stage and didn't even feel nervous."
While they didn't get to meet the headliners (there were strict COVID policies in place), Walpole was able to hear Witch Fever's name uttered from singer Gerard Way's lips to a crowd of over 30,000. "I was like, 'What the fuck is my life,'" she recalls of that moment. "It's strange how things like that have just become normal." Walpole is clearly relaxing into her imminent stardom — without compromising on the fire-eating vision that got her here in the first place.
