Nita Strauss: “The rock and metal world – which I love and is my home – has a bunch of whiny, complainy babies”
Love it when your favourite music artists try something new? Well, it’s a sentiment the rock and metal community would do well to learn from, according to guitarist Nita Strauss.
The 38-year-old, who took a break from Alice Cooper’s touring band in 2022 to play with popstar Demi Lovato, speaks on the January issue of Metal Hammer, where she took aim at the more vocal critics within these genres.
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Strauss argues that rock and metal fans, while passionate and dedicated, often have a tendency to resist change when it comes to their favourite bands or artists stepping outside their typical sound.
Reflecting on her work with Lovato on the latter’s Holy Fvck tour, Strauss says: “It wasn’t as big a departure as I thought it would be.”
“Demi made a really cool rock album, so they hired a rock band to do a rock show… Demi’s a metalhead at heart. I’d walk past her dressing room and she’d be listening to Megadeath. She turned me onto this great deathcore band called Bodysnatcher. She’s the real deal.”
The musician also contrasts Lovato’s devoted fanbase with the rock and metal fandom’s often rigid attitudes towards artists deviating from their established sound, saying: “Her fans are so dedicated, they’ll follow her whatever she does.”
“The thing about the rock and metal world – which I love and is my home – is that it’s a bunch of whiny, complainy babies.”
“If a band does a slight departure from what they’ve done before, the fanbase cries about it: ‘Everything they’re doing is terrible now!’” Strauss adds. “Metallica are the biggest band in the world and people still shit on their new stuff.”
Strauss sees this resistance as part of a broader gatekeeping mentality within the genre, where fans feel the need to “protect” rock and metal from outsiders stepping into the scene.
“I think a big part of that is because everybody feels like they have to protect our scene and keep it safe – no external people can get in, which I think is crazy,” she says. “If a pop artist wants to make a rock album, great. If a rock artist wants to make an R’n’B album, great. Music is for everyone.”
In other news, Nita Strauss recently revealed how she had to get sober after realising she was a “dangerous addict”. “It was really insidious, because it was bleeding into my personal life,” she said. “Some of the guys in the band had noticed it, but it took my partner Josh, who is now my husband, saying to me: ‘If you’re gonna be like this, I don’t know how long I’m going to be with you. I can’t watch you destroy your life like this.’”
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