Death Metal, for all the brute force associated with it, actually has some deep thinkers and nuanced creatives amongst the genre’s bloodied ranks. One of the most genuine talents in the field is Mallika Sundaramurthy (ex-Abnormality, Unfathomable Ruination). She is a brilliant and brave writer, a commanding artist, and a peak-level Death Metal vocalist.
Emasculator is a reclamation for Sundaramurthy of her chosen path, a self-realization and sonic achievement based on moving through the shadowwork of negative experiences of the past into a vehicle that suits her vision and ethics the best.
In the book Shakti Rising: Embracing Shadow And Light on the Goddess Path To Wholeness, author Kavita M. Chinnaiyan, MD writes that, “The path of spiritual practice, or sadhana, is mysterious and unpredictable. Expertly orchestrated by an unseen hand, it often makes sense only in retrospect.”
It was a pleasure to speak with Sundaramurthy about her journey, refining the lineup of this band of actualized women, the need for a project like this in a sexist world, spiritual subjects, the band’s commanding new music video and the powerful energy of their demon conquering release, The Disfigured and the Divine.
Morgan Y. Evans for Ghost Cult Magazine: This line-up and the record are phenomenal. It is face-ripping but has much depth. “Thesmophoric Rites” has one of your most texturally skilled vocal performances ever, like a sandpaper tornado of screams! And you found skilled metal maidens from around the world! How did you decide to put this band together after Abnormality and Castrator and other projects changed for you or ended? I like Morgehenna, she is very funny on social media and a sick instrumentalist. The chemistry comes through in the performances despite, I believe, much of it was done remotely by you all? Where is everyone located now?
Mallika Sundaramurthy: Hi Morgan! Thank you for the kind words. I’m really excited about this band and the lineup. It took me a while to enlist everyone, and I’m 100% confident in the skills, professionalism, and abilities of each and every band member. There is definitely some good chemistry going on.
About my mission: I set out to create the most brutal band I could, preferring to work with all women and holding to the highest standards regarding musicianship, content, and lyrics. We work remotely as you stated. I’m in Prague, Czech Republic, Ria is in the Bay Area of California, Morgan has been in transit between Florida, Vegas, and Texas, and Cierra is in Fort Collins, Colorado.
GCM: The album name The Disfigured And The Divine is deep. It is about Chhinnamasta of the Mahavidyas, who holds her own severed head. She represents so much, triumphing over dark forces and ego and also is a powerful symbol of rebirth through both death and life. What spoke to you about this deity? She is in many ways a destroyer of bondage and a fearsome, righteous force, but also gives life and blessings. I can also see the record name relating to how society disfigures people emotionally through gatekeeping, class bias, racism, and sexism…but it can be transcended through strength or empathy or uniting! Or as a trans/non-binary rights advocate, I can’t help but also think how some people don’t understand why, say, a trans man might want top surgery or a trans woman bottom surgery and they say they are ‘mutilating’ themselves but to someone who is trans it is a path to express their divine inner nature which aligns more with the soul. A profound experience of self-expression/realization and a far cry from, say, forced non-consensual genital mutilation.
MS: Right, those are some very good insights and observations. When something is forced on us, it is traumatic and disempowering. When we choose how we would like to present ourselves, when we have or regain control over our own bodies, this is empowering. I’m glad I can speak for myself as a cisgender queer woman, who is also biracial and has suffered through many trials and traumas. I empathize greatly with the trans community, and many other groups who have been oppressed and face hate and violence.
Chhinnamasta is a great tantric goddess who is above the life-death cycle. She is powerful and can be interpreted in many ways. She willingly decapitates herself to provide nourishment for her devotees. She can also be interpreted as a mother figure who sacrifices for her children, as mothers sacrifice and even risk their lives for their babies during childbirth. I relate to this aspect being a mother myself.
The title for the album came before the artwork and was inspired by the book Women Who Run with the Wolves. For me, the title represented women and female-identifying people, femininity, and the Divine Feminine, and how we are often under attack, dehumanized, and disempowered. Even though we have been traumatized, disfigured literally or figuratively, we are powerful and sacred, and only waiting for our moment to rise and take back our power. What is divine in us cannot be taken away.
GCM: Metal is such a big tent. You can have Green Carnation, Nasum, Karyn Crisis’ Gospel Of The Witches, Dying Out Flame (who had a great Vedic technical death metal album from Nepal called Shiva Rudrastakam that is just turning ten years old!) or like countless Blackgaze bands or hyper commercial Metalcore and it all has a place on the tree. What is it that speaks to you the most about the death metal branch you proudly perch upon? In some ways, like Kali-aspect worship, it can be a vessel/door to the infinite and take may forms and paths. I am a big fan of Jarboe’s Mahakali experimental album, so it was very cool to hear you apply a Mahavidya Hindu Tantric goddess to death metal themes! How did this album help you grow from within?
MS: I have always been attracted to the most brutal and technical forms of Death Metal. It speaks to me, in that I am most able to express anger, emotion, frustration in a safe and creative way. It has not been an easy path, as the death metal genre is traditionally male-dominated. I had to fight for a place within it, and it has become easier over time with more and more women joining the ranks. I faced a lot of misogyny and sexism, especially in the early years, and as tough as that was, I felt it was my calling to take up space in this scene and continue on in spite of it. I’m grateful for the many friends and allies I have found through the years, such as yourself. This album is a culmination of all the connections, experience, and growth I have made through my past body of musical work, as well as a huge amount of personal growth I have been making. I set out on a journey of self-discovery and healing in conjunction with the writing of the album. Both things were done in parallel and were equally important in gaining the energy and inspiration to do both.
The relationship between the band members was equally important. We have worked closely together to carve out a sound for ourselves and a rhythm in creative songwriting. In this process of getting to know each other and working together, we have grown to admire and inspire each other immensely. I really have found/ founded the band of my dreams in more ways than one.
GCM: We are in a time of mass femicide worldwide and people trying to track periods in the USA like total freaks. People taking seriously sexist pig sex traffickers like Andrew Tate as social media influencers and role models, like WTAF?!! What are some things going on that specifically inspired your lyrics? I know you wanted to embrace some divine feminine discourse and you shared some books with me that inspired you. “In Resplendent Terror” the name makes me think how they fear a united feminine power. An escape from blood bondage! I was thinking of Storm from X-Men and her lightning powers and how we really need more powerful female cultural characters like that. I hate that incels try to get any tv show review bombed now simply for featuring a woman.
MS: Yes indeed, in America there is a war on women happening, starting with our fundamental human rights, including reproductive rights. They will be going after birth control and gay marriage next. I am often disgusted with the news and what is happening in my home country. We like to pretend we are the most free country on earth, but we are far from it.
“They,” the Patriarchy, do fear a united female power. In ancient times, in prehistoric cultures, women and the Goddess were worshiped above all. There is no greater power and nothing more sacred than Divine Feminine and the ability to create life. In Shaktism, Devi (the goddess) is considered to be the cosmos itself. She is the embodiment of energy, matter and soul, the motivating force behind everything in the material universe.
GCM: How long did it take you to make the cover artwork? It is incredible! What was your process?
MS: I worked on the cover art over a two-week period of time, it was probably about 20-30 hours in total. I wanted to return to my roots, my Indian roots spiritually, and my artistic roots visually. I returned to my former favorite traditional medium watercolor/gouache, which I developed during my art school days and early career in illustration. Since those years I have worked mainly as a digital artist in art and video games and it has been years since I touched my paints. My recent dissatisfaction with digital art and AI pushed me to go traditional and really show this cover art as a hand-made product. The painting itself is a balance between modern style and traditional Indian miniature painting, which is something I have also studied under artist Ambreen Butt (at MassArt).
GC: That’s so awesome. Even though the “Depraved Disfigurement” demo was cool and raw, the new version of “Age of the Goddess” really destroys and is so organic and full of fire. How blown away were you when you heard Cierra White from Ash & Thorn’s drumming? What a lucky find! She suits this more than the drum machine, I have to say. And you really only found her as recently as February of 2024???!!
MS: Yes, Cierra joined our ranks in early 2024! We had worked with another drummer in the early days, but she was unable to commit to this project for personal reasons. We always knew we wanted a real drummer in the band, but used a drum machine out of necessity on the demo. Cierra we came upon by chance in an Instagram reel. I wrote to her out of the blue, and luckily she was interested in the band right away. Any doubts we may have had were instantly squashed with her audition video of “Age of the Goddess” which you can see shared on our socials. Our jaws literally dropped to see her reaching near-impossible BPMs, keeping up with insane programmed drums. She has proved herself more than proficient in the songwriting department also.
GCM: What were you trying to tap into and present to the world with this initial music video? Sort of unfurling the intensity of Emasculator and what you can do?
MS: We wanted to choose our strongest song, composition-wise and thematically that would translate well into music video format. I had been wanting to make a music video with Indian traditional dance for a long time, almost 10 years! It took me this long to finally make it a reality. The dancer, Kalidasa, I met around a decade ago and asked her if she would be willing to collaborate in a death metal video. She was agreeable, and I remembered over the years until we were getting to this moment. I wrote to her and she still remembered and was interested. How fortunate for us! We flew her from Boston to Prague to film. I wanted to showcase the strength, power, beauty, and fierceness of women and the Divine Feminine, and also tie in my Indian roots.
I used to attend Bharatanatyam dance recitals with the Indian side of my family, and I absolutely fell in love with it. I even attended dance lessons for a short time, until I convinced myself that dancing is not my strong suit. Kalidasa is a practitioner of Odissi-style, which is also a traditional Indian dance form, similar but different. She was brilliant in her dance and evoking the Goddess.
GCM: “The Unassailable” features a guest appearance by Vishal J. Singh, with chants by Swathi Kalahasti. And guest vocals on “Age of the Goddess” by Daniela Dahlien Neumanová. How did you discover these artists and draw them into the fold of being involved with this release? Also, the full record is so intense that when it is over it actually feels like a decapitation, hahaha.
MS: Vishal J. Singh is someone who I discovered around 2007-2010 at a time I was seeking out metal bands in India. I first came upon his progressive metal band Amogh Symphony. We have kept in touch over the years, but it wasn’t until recently that he invited me to collaborate with his band Serpents of Pakhangba. Following this, I invited him to collaborate on this Emasculator album.
I was envisioning an intro to the song done with traditional Indian instruments and a spoken word rendition of an ancient Indian poem, “Mashisura Mardini Stotra.” I thought it would be meaningful to ask an Indian musician to compose the instrumental track of the intro. I also asked a dear friend of mine who happens to be Indian to recite the poem in Sanskrit, and that is how it was done. Swathi and I have worked together in Prague, making games at Techona. She was in the QA department and I was working as an artist.
Daniela is another dear friend of mine in Prague. She is an accomplished vocalist from such bands as Noisebleed, Diligence, The Corona Lantern, and Keep on Rotting. We struck up a friendship in the Prague metal scene, and she filled in on vocals for Abnormality during the 2019 Europe tour while I was pregnant. We have been friends for a long time, but for some reason had never collaborated in the studio, so I figured it was time!
I’m glad you felt the full force of the album. It may be an EP, not quite a full-length album, but we really packed a lot of riffs, intense moments, passion, and thought into it, and I’m so glad it is effective and has been well received. Cheers!
New Standard Elite released The Disfigured and the Divine on physical formats on September 25th. Order at:
https://www.nserecords.bigcartel.com.
Buy other music and merch here:
https://emasculatorbdm.bandcamp.com/album/the-disfigured-and-the-divine
MORGAN Y. EVANS
Follow Morgan’s work here: