In a recent episode of “The Garza Podcast,” hosted by Chris Garza, guitarist for SUICIDE SILENCE, Otep Shamaya, the lead vocalist of OTEP, shared her tactics for managing online trolls.
She said: “I don’t even read YouTube comments. Nope. Or Blabbermouth. Yeah, I don’t read there either. I just feel, like, ‘Who are you people? ‘Cause I’ll have people tell me, like, this, this, this and this about a band. And I’m, like, ‘What band are you in?’ ‘Oh, I don’t have one.’ ‘Okay. Start a band in this climate, start a band and write 10 songs… You write 10 songs, show me how it’s done. Go out, have a 20-year career, write nine albums worth of material… And then I’ll listen to your point of view.
“But until then…’ It’s like you’re telling me the sky’s purple. It’s not, so I don’t care. It doesn’t really bother me that much. Sometimes I’ll go on… If I do go on to YouTube and people are being just rude or whatever, I’ll just leave a little snide comment or something funny, just to f**k with them. And they lose their energy real quick after that.”
“That’s part of what you have to learn when you get into the music industry, is that you’re gonna have critics, you’re gonna have people who don’t know anything about music, but have an opinion, and everybody has that,” she continued. “They used to call ’em armchair quarterbacks — people who never played football, but they wanna tell the coach how to coach the team or the quarterback who to throw to, and all that. You’re always gonna have these people who think they know more than the people that actually do it. And like I said, it’s like telling me that the sky’s purple. It isn’t. So, I’m not worried about it. Earth’s not flat. I’m not worried about it, you know. It doesn’t bother me. It used to, quite a bit. I used to think, like, ‘What am I doing wrong?'”
On September 15, OTEP released its latest album, The God Slayer, via Cleopatra Records. This new offering, succeeding their 2018 release Kult 45, presents an eclectic blend of unique tracks and ingenious renditions of popular hits spanning various genres like pop, rap, and grunge. The album includes transformative interpretations of songs by eminent artists such as Eminem, Billie Eilish, SLIPKNOT, Lil Peep, and Olivia Rodrigo.
