metal

Butcher Babies

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Los Angeles band built on duelling front-women trading screams and clean hooks, with a shock-rock streak inherited from the Plasmatics.

Butcher Babies formed in Los Angeles in 2010 around vocalists Heidi Shepherd and Carla Harvey, who self-released a debut EP in 2011. That year they also produced a comic book, written by Harvey, presented at San Diego Comic-Con. The band took its name from a Plasmatics song, and its early stagecraft borrowed heavily from Wendy O. Williams' confrontational look, including nipple tape the pair retired in 2014.

Signed to Century Media Records in late 2012, the band recorded its debut album, Goliath, in Los Angeles and released it in July 2013. The record entered the Billboard 200 at No. 112 and reached No. 3 on the Heatseekers chart, selling roughly 3,300 copies in its first week. Around the same time they toured with Marilyn Manson and Danzig and played the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival.

Musically the group works across groove metal, alternative metal and metalcore, built on down-tuned riffing and the contrast between screamed and sung vocal lines split between the two frontwomen. Their second album, Take It Like a Man, released in 2015, was described by the band as a return to thrash metal roots after the more melodic Goliath.

They released several further albums and toured widely on package bills through the 2010s. Harvey departed in the early 2020s, and Shepherd has continued to lead the band, now working alongside guitarist Henry Flury and drummer Dave Nickles.

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