In This Moment’s “Sex Metal Barbie” is Fantastic!

Although I hate to do it, I have to call out my friend Axl Rosenberg once again: I’ve seen him tirelessly praise bands ranging from Faith No More to Genghis Tron to At All Cost to Iwrestledabearonce for mashing together a wide variety of musical styles that, on paper, don’t seem as though they’d fit together, and he and Vince have both stressed the importance of great songwriting. And yet I strongly suspect that Axl would have nothing nice to say about In This Moment’s new single, “Sex Metal Barbie.” [Not true! I was delighted that the song’s title allowed me to put my silly Photoshop skills to work! -AR]

Which is really too bad. If elitists would stop trying to look cool in front of their friends and actually judge “Sex Metal Barbie” as a song, they’d probably see how fantastic it is. It mixes metal, pop, rap, and electronica to tremendous effect… AND it’s catchy as hell. If the song has any faults, it’s that Maria Brink’s vocals have clearly been manipulated by her producer. But, again, only hypocrites will make an issue of this. If that same producer had manipulated Brink’s voice to sound like a screaming monster (sorry, but your favorite death metal “singer” doesn’t really sound like that on his own), no one would bat an eye. But God forbid we allow any melody into metal. If all of our music isn’t atonal crap sung by men who look like they’ve never seen the inside of a shower before, how will people know that we don’t have vaginas?

In This Moment’s new album, Black Widow, drops November 17 on Atlantic.