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Music

Death metal becomes them

By SEAN DALY
Published June 8, 2006

There was a time not too long ago when death, speed and thrash metal - deafening genres in which "BLAAAARGH!!!" is considered poetry and "death grunts" are judged like fine wines - were strictly men's worlds. Make that dark, brooding men's worlds filled with hirsute basement-dwellers who have no use for love or hope or natural light.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the morgue: Women started sneaking into extreme-metal bands, as well. Really talented, attractive ones, too, such as Lacuna Coil's Cristina Scabbia and Wicked Wisdom's Jada Koren, who fronts her band when she isn't canoodling with Hollywood hubbie Will Smith (yep, that Jada).

My preferred metal matriarch these days is keyboardist Sabine Mair from Italian sludge merchants Graveworm, one of six bands who will bludgeon St. Pete Saturday at the Metal Crusaders Tour at the State Theatre. The dark, shadowy brunette is a perfectly creepy example of how, in the metal world, ghouls just wanna have fun, too.

The Metal Crusaders Tour - which also features Tampa's the Absence, Poland's Vader, German thrashers Destruction, Canadian extremists Kataklysm and New York's Speed/Kill/Hate, kicks off at 9 p.m. Saturday at the State Theatre, 687 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. $19.50. (727) 895-3045.

- SEAN DALY, Times pop music critic

[Last modified June 6, 2006, 13:08:51]