Chicago’s Immortal Bird defies classification. Their sound definitely runs thick with the hallmarks of black metal, but there’s also a bit of an “everything but the kitchen sink” vibe going on. The band shifts effortlessly from sludgy, doom metal to thrash all the way up through out and out hardcore. There are even beautifully dissonant, acoustic piano passages. That might sound like a schizophrenic cocktail on paper, but the underlying current of rage in both front-woman Rae’s voice and the band’s sonic battery manage to tie it all together in as a cohesive whole.

However, lest you think that Immortal Bird are only the bunch of angry individuals that they come across as sonically, consider this: the band eschews the label of “female fronted metal band” by labeling themselves “male backed metal” on their Facebook page. In the same space they also declare their hometown to be “Not China.” The latter is a tongue in cheek jab at South Dakota’s Ghost Bath, who convinced the press initially that they were in fact a Chinese black metal band as a publicity stunt.