About OTEP

You think you know OTEP? Think again. With the release of The Ascension, their third full-length outing, the band challenged itself to avoid clichés and classifications and find a new landscape of sound and vision. “We said ‘genre limits and music fads be damned, let’s write music that is important to us and that motivates us,” explains Otep Shamaya, the band’s namesake and driving force. “I wanted to write songs we believe in and let nothing stop us from building the album we want to make.” OTEP doesn’t merely make records, the band creates musically intricate soundscapes of the soul and society. On The Ascension frontwoman Otep is both inciteful and insightful, with songs ranging from the aggro call to arms of “Confrontation” to the vulnerable ‘Perfectly Flawed.’ The Ascension is infused with a meticulous care to detail, the CD’s 13 songs both free and freeing for the listener and the band. Otep explains: “I set out to reclaim the mindset I had when I wrote the first record (“Sevas Tra”). Bands have another level of intensity and risk-taking when writing their first record. I wanted to recapture the sound of that hunger and infuse it with as much raw passion and purpose as possible.” 

“The Ascension” marks the debut of two new OTEP members, guitarist Karma Cheema and drummer Brian Wolff, who join Otep and founding bass player eVil J. Otep formed the band in late 2000 with a focus on finding dynamic musicians with diverse musical backgrounds and a passion to play live music. The singer praises eViL j (Jason McGuire) as a “remarkable musician. eViL j is the Apollo t o my Dionysus. He’s a classically trained musician with a natural feel for improv, and it’s in that place where we bond the most, creatively. On stage, he is the maestro, keeping the soundscape pulsing. So while I’m off exploring the boundaries or the worlds of the seen and unseen, narrating what I see and feel, we work together as the navigators of the trip. He becomes the anchor so I don’t float too far away.” Also contributing to “The_Ascension” is co-writer Holly Knight (“Perfectly Flawed”), and Grammy-nominated Mudvayne guitarist Greg Tribbett (co-writer on “Invisible,” “Crooked Spoons” and “Confrontation”).

Grammy-winning producer Dave Fortman (Evanesence, Mudvayne) was also a crucial ingredient, as Otep explains: “Dave makes powerful records with a sexy tone, but when it needs to be aggressive, it’s explosive and blistering like an inferno, and when it needs to sound soft and beautiful, it twinkles like a constellation.” If Otep herself waxes articulate on sometimes-ethereal and heady ideas, she skillfully translates her inner and outer workings into wildly potent sounds and lyrics that are relatable to the band’s legion of fans. “I write lyrics the way that I like my art—the way I like to see a painting, or read a story,” Otep explains. “I hope that there’s some vulnerability, honesty and authenticity, but at the same time, presented in such a universal way that I can find myself in it as well. I hope our work provokes, motivates and inspires—that’s the definition of art for me.”

OTEP does not merely pay lip service to the ideas of provocation and inspiration, as the band’s relationship to their audience proves. OTEP’s November 2006 tour, in partnership with several Web 2.0 companies, allowed fans to determine tour routing and venues and shape the band’s setlist via cell-phone voting, while a contest encouraged fans to create a video for “Ghostflowers,” with the band picking the winner. Otep is the first 2.0 activist and actively adopts new social media technologies to connect to her fans in this webolution. OTEP encourages fans to claim ownership over the band—and “all art they support.” Likewise, Otep supports fans in personal ways, notably through “You Are Not Alone.” This information clearinghouse began on the band’s website as a resource guide for people in need of help with depression, suicide, pregnancy, rape, domestic violence and other issues. Otep says, “Maybe ‘You Are Not Alone’ will help just one person. Maybe people just need a point in the right direction. It’s building toward philanthropy.” She is currently using an innovative charity widget on her various websites to make it easy for fans to donate money to charities she feels are important (i.e., Save Darfur). And she is dedicating 13 songs on the album to 13 different charities. Otep has also worked with moveon.org to encourage voting.

That she’s a self-described “proactive reactionary” is clear in the lyrics of songs like “Confrontation,” a political battle cry that is a call for people to stand up and speak, to do their part. Recorded in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, the song’s lyrics took on a new meaning, as Otep explains: “The energy of the city seeped into what we were doing, the reality of what was going on in the world crashed down upon us. New Orleans was very immediate, now and contemporary, which anchored us emotionally, consciously and as activists, so that we remembered that suffering is happening.” Other songs, like “Perfectly Flawed,” are more personal (“I’m rejecting my reflection / cuz I hate the way it judges me”) while “Noose and Nail” started with one of Otep’s poems, and is about what she sees as the hypocrisy of the pharmaceutical culture in America, or as Otep puts it, “‘pilling’ the pain away… the holy panacea.”     

Otep channels her pain into art, and the band’s incendiary live shows are proof positive. Her drive is likewise legendary. In fact, she was merely a fan at Ozzfest 2000 when she told a friend, “I’ll be here next year playing with my band.” He laughed. At that point, she’d never been in a band, but two months later she’d formed OTEP, and seven months earned a record deal without a demo, solely on the strength of the lineup’s live show. What was OTEP’s eighth live gig ever? Ozzfest 2001. In addition to their own headlining tours, OTEP has played on Ozzfest 2001, 2002 and 2004.