RAINBOW DEATHRAY
Rainbow Deathray will put you under their influence with an intense mix of music that is a fusion of pop/rock, electro-industrial and crunchy metal guitars that you can dance to and just get blown away by the sound that they create. “We’re an all-female band playing a fusion of genres including metal, industrial, and electronic music. Mariko sings, growls, and plays electric violin, Annaïs Paris covers the synths on her keytar and also does some vocals, Kit Wing drives the bass, and last year Egg Sterminate joined us on guitar. Our unicorn mascot, Princess Doom, plays our drums and our backing tracks… no really! So we’re pretty different to a lot of other bands out there, and that’s a lot of fun!”
The band are from Sydney Australia and formed in 2014 with Mariko Gray on Vocals, Violin, programming m Annaïs Paris : Keytar, Synth Anthea Kay on guitar Kit Wing Midnighter on bass. “In a lot of ways, the band sorta happened by accident, said Mariko. I’d had trouble starting a new project after my previous band, Wintergaunt, broke up. One of the problems I was having was that guys would get in touch with me wanting to collab, and the first day would be great, lots of talk about music and so on, but after that they’d start asking me out to the movies etc. and never get back to the music. I basically got sick of guys trying to use music as a pick up line with me. But then I realized I was friends with a whole band’s worth of lovely ladies, and it evolved from there, ending up with a completely different line up but still all female, and that’s worked out really well for us. So we didn’t really start with any particular goals in mind, other than to just make music and have fun doing it.”
Rainbow Deathray are a band that goes against the grain as an all female band in the land down under and deliver solid music that is rock solid and intense. “Well, for starters, just existing kinda defies a lot of the stereotypes. Your standard metal band is usually a bunch of guys in black shirts, whereas we’re a bunch of girls wearing whatever the hell we want, we’ve got our fair share of black but we splash in some rainbows and will dress anything from punk to gothic lolita. Anyone coming along to a metal gig can tell right away that we’re different just from that. Another thing that sets us apart is we don’t purposefully try to appeal to male sexualised tastes, which is something women sometimes feel pressured to do to fit in, whether that’s in underground or mainstream music. People will still interpret us however they want, but our image is more about expressing ourselves and having some fun. And then finally, we also show our support for other female artists in the scene. We’re all in this together, and encouraging each other is how you build a community where other women feel safe to give this a shot. Things are gradually changing, but women are still often seen as a novelty, rather than musicians in their own right. The only way to change that is if more of us get up on that stage until seeing female musicians becomes normal.”
“We do wonder sometimes whether people look past the bubbly exterior of our image and actually see the dark themes our songs explore. But on the other hand, we were once mistaken for death metal, which was pretty funny. On the all-female side of things, sometimes we get mistaken for being more actively feminist than we really are, and we’ve also had people assume we’re all lesbians, which isn’t the case. But it’s all-good, really, people will always have their own interpretations, it’s just something that goes along with any kind of art, and it’s always interesting to find out the different messages people draw from us.”
Mariko: "The songs on our first EP were all written before the band formed, and most of them were done while I was studying for my music degree. A couple came from my early attempts at forming bands, but most were written for my classes. When Rainbow Death Ray got going, we adapted them for our style, which changed them up a fair bit, but they’re still essentially those same songs that I’d been working on for a while. The inspiration for the lyrics varies. Some of them are more introspective, based on struggles I’ve had in my life, particularly with depression and trying to overcome it. But then there’s Carousel, which is a sort of nightmare vision of Alice in Wonderland, and What You’ve Become is actually about my ex’s cat…"
The band actually had to take a break as Mariko had to overcome some personal obstacles before getting back on track. “My head is probably the biggest obstacle right now! My grandparents actually died right around the launch of our first EP, and I was already pretty burned out at the time from getting the thing made and running the crowdfunding campaign. I have a history of depression, so when all that hit, my mental health just collapsed. I’ve been in treatment ever since, and I hung on as long as I could, but I just couldn’t keep up the energy to perform well. I was also getting all kinds of bad side effects from the medication, so I had to stop basically everything, including my day job. I’m still in treatment, but I’ve improved a little, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to get back into it soon. I’ve already organized myself some singing lessons with Alicia from SNUFF, which is pretty exciting, so that’ll help me get my voice back in shape and catch any bad habits I’ve picked up in my downtime.”
"Well, we could almost say “expect the unexpected” maybe, we are a bit unusual. We’re already visually different to a lot of the bands we play with, and since we fuse genres, we tend to sound pretty different as well. That probably also feeds into our stage performance, we do a bit of the aggressive heavy metal thing, but we can also do silly or childish things like on-stage selfies and shooting bubbles into the crowd. We try to make it a fun and energetic show."
"It’s hard to pin that down sometimes, since we really just started off having fun and didn’t have any expectations for where we could go. But we do have this ongoing theme of contradictions happening. We like to juxtapose fun synth sounds against heavy guitars, a bubbly image against dark lyrics, our femininity against traditionally masculine music genres, and so on. But now that we’ve been together for a while and have started writing songs as a group, we’re looking at taking things in a darker, heavier direction as we go forward. That might change some of our stage image as well maybe, we’re not sure, it’s still an evolving idea. We’ve also got so many options and opportunities to look forward to. We can’t really say exactly what the future will bring, but we’re ready for the ride and we’ll just see where it takes us. As for our message to the world… well, for one thing, we’re flattered that the world outside Sydney Australia would ask us! Perhaps it’d go something like this – be good to each other, be who you want to be, and do your best to follow your dreams!"
Follow Rainbow Death Ray: www.rainbowdeathray.com
Download our EP for free: https://rainbowdeathray.bandcamp.com
We are most active on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RainbowDeathRay