Last time I saw Butcher Babies was Halloween in San Francisco, and Heidi and Carla came out with full beards, dressed as men, which pretty much set the tone for the whole night and made it ridiculously fun to shoot.
I’ve always found this band interesting because they sit right in that space between scream-heavy metal and big, almost pop-level hooks, all wrapped in slick production, and it taps into that same part of my brain that loves glam metal and a lot of the early 2000s stuff. It shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it really does.
I met Carla Harvey once at the Golden God Awards, and she was exactly what you’d want her to be. Just cool, no effort, no ego.
If you take the band at face value, it’s obviously commercial and very produced, but there’s still real bite to it, and it leans all the way into being loud, over the top, and unapologetic, which is probably why it lands.
Carla’s been busy with Lords of Acid and her own project lately, but Heidi is unreal live and has the crowd completely locked in from the start. At one point, she walked straight into the middle of a circle pit like it was nothing and just owned it, and you realize pretty quickly you’re watching someone who knows exactly what they’re doing and enjoys every second of it.
The new songs are strong as well, and it feels like they’ve got enough there to push into a much bigger mainstream conversation if they want it. And honestly, if someone like Simon Cowell ever went looking for a crossover metal frontwoman, Heidi Shepherd would be the obvious place to start. This is a new Butcher Babies without Carla, and it works well as a four-piece. Locked and loaded, a bit more focused, a bit more accessible, but still with the original brutality that we all know and love from the early days.
I was there for Butcher Babies, no question, but Infected Rain fully earned that co-headline slot and the hour they were given.
They opened with “The Answer Is You” and “Dying Light,” and you could feel the shift in the room almost immediately, because they’re not a straightforward heavy band and don’t really behave like one. There’s something slower and more atmospheric running through it, almost cinematic at times, and they take their time building things before dropping into something much heavier when you’re not expecting it. Lena is genuinely captivating to watch because she moves between brutal and beautiful without making a big show of it, and it all feels completely natural.
They moved through “Fighter,” “Orphan Soul,” and “Black Gold” and just kept building their world, and by the time they hit “Pandemonium” and “Never To Return,” the whole room had traveled with them. They closed with “Because I Let You” and “Judgemental Trap,” which landed exactly how you’d want a set like that to end.
On paper, it’s not the most obvious pairing, and the direction both bands are heading in doesn’t immediately scream natural fit, but live, it meets in the middle where it counts, and the crowd was fully there for both. I didn’t know what to expect from Black Spikes, but they were a great surprise and definitely a band worth paying attention to.
Went for Butcher Babies, and left with a lot more than that.
BUTCHER BABIES
BLACK SPIKES
