‘The vision, however new and culturally unique, is translated back into a traditional oral format: the new within the old, reflecting the tenacity of oral tradition.’
“Magic in the Mountains: The Yakima Shaman: Power & Practice”, by Donald Hines, 1993

The stratosphere of my story is woven with so many American heartbreaks that my DNA seems permanently tuned to Patsy Cline’s “Fall to Pieces.” In these broken pieces, I’ve fought to carve out a sense of belonging—some place amidst the ruins of a well-fought war. My grandmother used to tell tales of family woes and heartbreak as if they were the very fabric of our shared ancestry.

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Grandmother’s voice was golden—a place where she tucked away her secrets. She was a siren, luring you across a smoke-filled room with her sultry sadness and rough-around-the-edges charm. She found God in the holy waters of honky-tonks, at least until children and the rapture of everyday life claimed the sanctuary of her dreams. She traded in “Strange Fruit” for a father she thought she’d found in the dogmatic catacombs of Kingdom Halls. Still, she always shared that part of herself with me. She told the racy stories, grasping her hands like prayer, a nostalgic exhale slipping through the blinds. With me, she felt safe—a place to whisper her discontent with choices that turned her from the Old Ways of our blood. She saw the fire in me and tried to pass on the Ceremony. I ended up finding it myself. I found it in metal.

Laying down screams for my band, Cathartes Aura in 2019.

There’s resonance in the tonsils, a release of primal force summoned from the swamps of modern life. Here, a feral wind releases its shadow, storm clouds clash against the shores of volcanic words, and violent air rushes through smoke-strained cords. The buzz of amplified sound becomes a harbor for Armageddon, spinning chaos into a kind of bliss. The drums thump, quickening the trance—an anxious war waged on flesh and heart. This is what metal means to me: a padded cell of my own, where trauma is brought to the chopping block for visceral release.

When I was young, my world seethed with the wonder of nature—the gilded peaks draped in mist, ancient trees resisting the chainsaw’s hum, rivers meandering in dramatic silence as forests fell like rain. These landscapes were soundtracked by stereo speakers blasting Black Sabbath, by motorcycles, Iron Maiden, skateboarding, and punk rock. I’d listen to quaking mountains scream like thunderbirds in 4/4 time and distortion, summoning visions through a haze of psychedelic experiments. (I believe my ancestors used mushrooms as a kind of message in a bottle—or, more accurately, a cap.)

I felt the anger and confusion of being cut off from my ancestors and the spirit of place, forced to bow to an anemic god who never had our Mother’s best intentions at heart, feeding us a diet of forgetting. Old stories would rise up, speaking of days lost to the corpses of progress and manifest destinies, as sweaty bodies slammed together in a prayerful trance. It was redemption from the plagues—at least for a little while.

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Check out our band, Cathartes Aura.