Ju ne, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 47SOUNDS LIKE:A supernatural
nervous breakdown
FOR FANS OF: Mazzy Star, Mel-
vins, Royal Thunder
WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTEN-
TION: Since forming in 2009 as
a solo project for ex-Whirr singer
Kristina Esfandiari, King Woman
have congealed into a raging
tour de force of gloom and woe.
Since releasing their debut EP,
2014’s Doubt, the foursome has
gigged with Blonde Redhead
and True Widow, and they’ve
become more of a collabora-
tive songwriting unit. Esfandiari
says the stark, shimmery, glacial
atmosphere of their latest album,
their fi rst for metal label Relapse,
Created in the Image of Suff ering,was a group effort and stronger
because of it. “It took a while for
us to get into our groove and
trust each other and get comfort-
able with each other but now I
feel we’re in such a good place,”
she says. Now Esfandiari feels
comfortable singing personal lyr-
ics about what she describes as
a “very graceless” time in her life.
The record was a cathartic expe-
rience that has elements of doom
metal and shoegaze, but which
she feels ultimately transcends
genre. “To me, it’s just spiritual
music,” she says. “Some people
call it ethereal, transcendental
or mystical, but for me, when
I’m singing, I just go to a place
where I don’t feel like I’m thereanymore. It’s my way to connect
to myself and to my own sense of
spirituality.”
THEY SAY: Esfandiari drew from
the experience of partaking in an
ayahuasca ceremony for the fi rst
time for the lyrics to Suff ering’s
lead track, “Utopia”. “I really love
psychedelics, but I learned that
ayahuasca is a diff erent animal,”
she says. “It’s pretty intense. I did
my fi rst ayahuasca ceremony last
June or July with my partner at
the time, and the song is about
how I felt in this new headspace
and how beautiful it was. It was
really crazy and kind of scary.
You’re basically in this ceremony
in the redwoods for nine hours
and there are a bunch of strang-ers singing spiritual songs in
Portuguese and playing guitar.
It’s really intense, but it was a
really beautiful experience and I
did it several times after that. It’s
helped me a lot to deal with some
personal things. Somebody in-
vited me to do one at the perfect
time for me because I was in a
desperate, messed-up place. I was
like, ‘I really need something to
happen in my life to shake me out
of this headspace that I’m in’, and
that ceremony did that for me.”
HEAR FOR YOURSELF: From its
crashing, descending opening riff
to Esfandiari moaning, “And this
is really happening”, the band’s
ayahuasca-brushed “Utopia” is a
trippy explosion. KORY GROWKing Woman