Julie Christmas crashed back onto the avant-metal scene with a vengeance this year. Weaponising banshee howls, jagged distortion and sludgy vitriol, Ridiculous And Full Of Blood wasn’t for the faint of heart. “I’m going for high trauma,” she smirks. “You’re leaving with at least one Band-Aid.”
Julie made her name as frontwoman of New York noise rockers Made Out Of Babies in the 00s, has also sung for post-metallers Battle Of Mice and post-prog collective Spylacopa, and released solo record The Bad Wife in 2010. While she reared her head in 2016 to work on Cult Of Luna’s seventh album, Mariner, her return this year came as quite the surprise.
“Everything I do takes a long time to make, because I wanna do it right,” she explains. “Sometimes in music there’s a focus on ‘being relevant’… but I never care. Why speak if you have nothing to say?”
Ridiculous And Full Of Blood certainly had a lot to say; it was a biopsy of the human condition, ruminating over the ever-trickling hourglass of time, feelings of inadequacy, and even probing the existence of a higher power. From Not Enough’s abrasive clatter, to the blasphemously doomy Seven Days, it was an existential wrecking-ball, forcing you to heed its maniacal wails as it clawed at your heartstrings.
“I had a lot of rage to unleash when I was younger, but nowadays I’m overwhelmed by a whole spectrum of emotions,” she admits. “I’ve learnt that there are other feelings beyond rage that deserve to be unleashed.”
Every track was delivered with more intensity than 2010’s The Bad Wife – and Julie chalks that up to experience. “When you’re younger, you think that getting older will make you more frail, but I have found it’s the opposite,” she explains. “You become stronger. Now, I can deal with anything.”
An impressive entourage rounded the project off – “It’s under my name, but this isn’t ‘my’ record,” Julie insists. One collaborator was Cult Of Luna’s Johannes Persson, who lent some menacing riffs and vocals.
“This album wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t toured with Cult of Luna,” Julie explains. “Their manager was pretty instrumental in me writing another album. He was like that peer-pressuring friend at a party: ‘Oh no, you’re not leaving right now, are you?’”
While Julie “hates writing”, this release was necessary. Howling her throat raw is an addiction she can’t quit.
“I used to think I’d keep screaming until a trickle of blood came out,” she recalls. “It happens to singers who trash their voices. Sometimes I think, ‘This is gonna be the final blow.’ But it hasn’t happened yet.”
It’s a sentiment Julie hopes people can take from Ridiculous And Full Of Blood – if you’ve still got gas in the tank, give it your all.
“You only get one life,” she says. “There is no better embodiment of constantly fucking up than me – but tough bitches cry, then we get back up again. Just go and feel something. Live, be human. It’s never too late.”
Ridiculous And Full Of Blood is out now via Red CRK.
