Otep To Headline Ozzfest 2005?

Band Photo: Otep (?)

I stumbled upon this article via Google that mentions Otep headlining this year's Ozzfest (likely referring to headlining the second stage) as well as an interview with frontwoman Otep Shamaya. Here's a bit from the interview:

AE: Is this your first band ever?
O: This is my first band. I tooled around with musicians, but I was never formally trained. Equipment, timing, different time signatures, I didn’t know any of that stuff. I sat with musicians, learned a little bit by osmosis. It’s a completely different mental process from writing.
When I started the band I found a manager and I brought my books over, my journals and all my illustrations in this big pile. “This is what I want, I want to turn this into music”. And he looked at me and said “OK, let’s try it, let’s find some musicians.”

What we do is a little different, it’s not just your typical metal show. It’s not hair metal or glam or anything of that nature. It’s sort of a dissident cabaret, its theater and in the highest respect to someone like Antonin Artaud. It’s delivering the experience of the topic of the song versus just singing about it, we actually live every moment of the song onstage. Without fire or any sort of theatrics or anything. It’s all through the act of performance.

AE: How did Capitol [Records] find you guys?
O: We were doing local shows around LA and the buzz started and all of a sudden we start noticing suits in the corners watching us and on their phones and their little Blackberries. A friend of ours was our manager at the time and he started coming over and saying “Hey they want to showcase you.” It was a bunch of major labels which was really bizarre, because I never thought we’d get that.

(Be warned that the interview is on a lesbian/bisexual site focused on women in entertainment and the media. And yes, I really did find it via Google...not part of my everyday reading ;-)

Read the full article at Afterellen.com.