Check out this really cool story/interview with and about Angela by Kirsty Evans of eastbayexpress.com!

Women in Metal
It’s been a long, hard road getting to a place where a woman like Angela Gossow can front a band like Arch Enemy.

“We get a lot of hate from guys,” Gossow said.

The history of women in metal was, until fairly recently, pretty depressing stuff. For young women first getting into the metal scene, it often seemed as if the only available roles were as a groupie, video vixen, or glammed-up figurehead vocalist — no musical contribution required. Even in the rare cases where women did show up in bands, the bands in question tended to be the kind that no one really took very seriously. Think Vixen — big hair, poppy choruses, and no musical talent of any kind — ridiculous even by hair-metal standards. If you didn’t want to take that route, the only other option was to adopt a rather butch, deliberately non-sexual persona and try to blend in with the male metalheads. The concept of being a strong woman who wasn’t trying to hide the fact that she was a woman? Heresy.[...]

[...]Consider Gossow of the Swedish band Arch Enemy, which is currently touring in support of The Root of All Evil. Gossow is no perky, skimpily dressed front woman trying to market metal in a way that’s palatable to the masses. Arch Enemy is a heavy band — “Iron Maiden meets death metal” — and Gossow’s singing style is more screaming and growling than cute sing-along choruses. She stubbornly refuses to assume the role of either a de-sexualized and invisible female metalhead or what she scornfully refers to as the “soap the car in the background” video prop.[...]

READ THE WHOLE INTERVIEW!