Video Premiere: Gwenmarie White’s Black Metal Cover of Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood”

Chances are the very idea of a black metal cover of a Taylor Swift song is what brought you in here. So before we get started, please allow us to introduce Gwenmarie White, the artist behind “Skjemt Blod,” the sonic and visual masterpiece in which you are about to indulge:

“Gwenmarie White is a self-professed Metalhead Valley Girl interested in what would happen if Laura Ashley listened to Cannibal Corpse, if the subway scene from Possession took place in Limited Too, if Lisa Frank ran a dogfighting ring, and if Bonne Bell made corpse paint. When it comes to creative content, she staunchly subscribes to Larry David’s “no hugging, no learning” policy, and aims to create work that is easy to consume/difficult to digest. Her past studies have included the subjects of moshing, ecstatic/liminal spaces, and women invading traditionally male territory.”

With the stage sufficiently set, let’s move on to Gwenmarie’s take on “Bad Blood,” a black metal version of Tay-Tay’s smash hit that comes with a visual accompaniment just as haunting and surreal as you’d imagine. The video takes the typical idea of beauty and juxtaposes it with… well, you know… for a sharp commentary on pleasure and violence in modern American culture, how they play off one another and how they overlap. As Gwenmarie herself tells us, “Suburban whiteness rears its ugly (but also, like, really, really pretty) head, proving that ‘trve’ brutality takes many forms, and moves with an insidious ease throughout the institutions of late-stage capitalism.”

Check out the clip below. More from Gwenmarie White on Vimeo right here.