If you don’t yet know the Pacific Northwest band Solicitor, now’s as good a time as any to become apprised. They’re a crushing speed metal band that exudes badassery with a vicious attack that stands out in a genre becoming increasingly saturated with mundanity and mediocrity. Their approach tends to often take them down paths less traveled, avoiding the low-hanging fruit of chugging their way through songs with formulaic progressions and song structuring. Musically, it’s like a consistent sonic assault with furious rhythms and riffs that cut and slice with lead vocalist Amy Lee Carlson’s charismatic and commanding presence guiding the onslaught.
For all intents and purposes, Solicitor is a young band. Amy and guitarist Matthew Vogan came from a band called Substratum, with the others coming from a band called Hexengeist. Following the dissolution of both previous bands in 2018, Solicitor took shape and was a functioning unit by that November. Because of the public interest in what the individuals were getting up to next, it was a prime time for an introduction to the band. They seized the moment to make use of the enthusiasm and released a two-song demo in February 2019.
The word on Solicitor traveled fast and far. They managed to keep the momentum up by following the demo with their first EP that May which coincided with their debut appearance at Legions of Metal in Chicago. The festival was the first real show for Solicitor as a band. “We had only done one local Seattle show,” Amy explains. “We did that one to just kind of test the waters. So yeah, our first real appearance was at the Legions of Metal in Chicago in 2019.”
“We’d all been in bands for so long. We’ve all paid our dues, for lack of a better term. We felt like we deserved that. We felt like if we’re going to be given this opportunity if we’re going to take advantage of the momentum of our previous projects, we need to show people that it’s worth it. Not only are we willing to do it, but we’ve got the substance to back it up. The songwriting is there. The look is there. The sound is there. The whole package is there.”
Solicitor went on to release their debut full-length, Spectral Devastation in 2020 and, more recently, a two-song 7” earlier this year in January called All Debts on Death. The latter worked to give wanting fans a taste of something new and it allowed the band to put their feelers out to anticipate and determine moves they’ll make in the coming months. I recently spoke with Amy Lee Carlson for a little bit about the band, their current and future pursuits as well as a few other things that came up over the course of our conversation. She was cool to chat with, everything just seemed to flow. Check it out!
It had to feel good knowing that a whole lot of people were already digging the band so quickly in the process of getting things together. You guys really hit the ground running with the momentum that’d already been generated.
Oh yeah. It was one of those things like it could’ve gone either way. People could’ve been like, “This new band, it’s ok. They did ok.” Or it could have been like, “Holy shit! These guys are phenomenal.” Luckily for us it was the latter.
When I first came across Solicitor, the visual aesthetic of the band’s image grabbed me. It made me want to check the band out quickly. Did you guys decide to employ such a visual image from the beginning?
Absolutely. We’ve all been in bands that collapsed for one reason or another. Not only is it important for everyone to collaborate musically and be on the same page as far as what you want to do with the sound, but you also have to be on the same page when it comes down to how you look and present yourself on stage.
It’s a look that’s nice and confrontational in its attitude.
When it comes to presenting ourselves, that was a conversation that we sat down and had. I have a very strong image that I present online in my personal profiles and people expect that from me, and I wanted the guys to acknowledge that. I mean, you can’t have one person in basketball shorts and a denim vest with someone else in their skinny jeans with their Rebooks or Adidas or whatever. You want to look like a band! You know?! Then it sucks because you get in the territory of, “Is it a schtick or a gimmick” or “Are you just dressing up?” That kind of stuff. You have to be aware of certain tropes and stereotypes.
There are certain lines you’ve got to walk.
As altruistic as it is to say, “Oh, the music comes first,” if you don’t look like you’re taking it seriously, If you don’t look like you care, you could be the greatest fucking band in the underground scene and still get no credit because you’re wearing a stained sports shirt with your high tops with a logo on it. I’m not trying to sound like a dick, but if you want labels to be interested in you or you want festivals to give you offers, you need to know how to present yourself. Their bottom line is to put on a show. So yeah, that [the image] was a conscious decision.
Do you ever receive random comments by people that get under your skin?
Yeah, at our own shows, we’ll run across people sometimes who say things like, “I don’t usually dig chick vocals but you’re really good!” Just that kind of stuff really. It’s like, “Man! I was having a great night before you came along!” Thanks for the compliment, I guess. Some people mean well and don’t really know what they’re saying. They don’t understand the words coming out of their mouths sometimes.
Was it difficult for you personally to put yourself out there and say, “100%, this is who I am.?” Were you ever concerned about the band being pigeon-holed?
You know, I talked about that with my bandmates, and I talked about that a lot with other frontwomen. It’s gotten better over the last 5-10 years but saying “Female-fronted band” is the bane of my existence. I understand it’s a category people use to describe certain bands. I wish that it was not necessary. I would like bands to stand up using their own merits on their own music they produce and the images that they have. I am glad that it’s not happening as much as it used to. You can look at our Bandcamp page or on Facebook and you’ll never see us calling ourselves ‘female-fronted’ heavy metal. It’ll never happen. Then as far as pigeon-holing goes, we try to resist anything like that. I don’t think it’s a fair assessment of what we do.
Unfortunately, as a male, I might’ve been guilty of doing that at some point. It’s something that I don’t like to see said about a band like that. At this point, I’m sure that there are people who think things have come around and that things for women have changed. It’s unfortunate.
It is unfortunate. Part of that too is for cataloging purposes, you do kind of have to go through and remember female-fronted bands. Otherwise, you’re not going to find bands like Warlock, Chastain, Black Knight, or even Holy Moses, if you don’t look for them specifically. And more often than not, they’re not cataloged as anything else.
A few years back I was doing an interview with a particularly influential heavy metal band comprised of all females and they mentioned that even still today they’ll run across exclusive situations because a festival might already have its quota of female bands or female performers signed up. It kind of took me aback that we’re still that far back here in the 21st Century. Have you ever run into anything like that in your experiences?
You know, I think we’re in an interesting position because we’re still an underground band. We’re not playing those larger festivals or anything like that. We’re doing underground thrash metal, speed metal, traditional metal shows with old-school bands or up and coming young bands. There are a couple of festivals that are really trying to lean into bands with female members or female-presenting members without saying that that’s specifically what they’re doing.
So, there are still conversations to be had.
Yeah. There are so many different perspectives on what that whole thing means to individual people. I participated in a round table discussion with a few different folks. There were some ladies from L.A., Deborah from Lady Beast, and a friend of mine from Detroit who runs a record label out there. These ladies from L.A. are in their 50s and 60s now and they were part of the music scene for decades. It was interesting to hear their perspectives on what it was like in Hollywood in the 1970s and ‘80s and what they had to put up with performing with bands. It was just a really cool discussion about how certain things have changed and certain things that haven’t.
You know, no matter what you do as a band, your band has to be good. If you’re fighting against stereotypes and you’re adamant about participating in all of that, then you have to be willing to work even harder and follow through. It doesn’t always feel like a level playing field. That’s for sure.
From your perspective, do you see an end in sight? Do you feel like you’ll see a time when that kind of thing doesn’t seem to matter as much?
I hope so! And I hope it comes sooner rather than later. It is getting better. People are sticking up more for each other. I’m hearing a lot more of “Hey, that’s a fucked-up way of talking,” or “That’s kind of a fucked-up way of thinking.” I’m seeing less fighting about it online, too. But who knows? Maybe that’s just my circle of friends. But I find that folks that really support music and really support heavy metal and really support bands that’re working their asses off, all of that stuff matters less and less.
Well, I know that the word on Solicitor is really good at the moment. You guys did a tour and the Hell’s Heroes festival this spring. How was that for you guys?
Oh, there aren’t even enough words to describe how awesome Hell’s Heroes was. It was probably one of the first major festivals in the states this year coming out of major Covid restrictions. Texas in April is a perfect time of year. And I think it’ll be in March next year.
Are you guys going to be on that bill?
No, we’ll be getting ready to play over in Europe around that time. I know that there are a few bands coming back next year but even if an offer came, we wouldn’t be able to appear.
Did I see that you guys are playing the Keep It True festival?
Yeah, that’s one of our stops.
How about North America? Any tour plans for that coming up? I know you guys did one a while back.
We did an arduous five-week tour with a lot of problems and we’re still recovering. But we’ve got some stuff in the works for September of next year. And there are somethings going on in July that haven’t been announced yet. We’ll have some announcements in the next few months, before the end of the year. There’s a festival this November in L.A. that we’re going to play, then we’ll be done for the rest of the year. We’re really going to focus on writing. But we will be back out there.
What about new music? You recently released the “All Debts on Death” single which has two fantastic new tracks on it. They’re a little bit longer in playtime. Is there more new material? I know that fans want to know. Is that coming along?
We are currently in the process of writing for the next album. We’ve just had a lot of things going on. I mean, last December and January I was recovering from Bell’s Palsy and Covid at the same time. Then I had back surgery in March. That put a lot of things on the back burner for me, and us as well. By the time we played Hell’s Heroes I’d only been in recovery for about a month. I’m doing ok now. I’m up and at it. I still have some tough days but yeah, things are good. We’ve just had a lot going on outside of the band so as much as we would’ve loved to’ve made more progress writing this year, it’s all just finally kicking off now. But we’re still on track to finish by the end of the year, early next year. We’re hoping for maybe a September release. I just want people to know that it’ll be worth the wait. With “All Debts on Death” we were testing the waters with a new studio and engineer. We learned a lot about production values and what we want, and what we don’t want.
A lot of people have things like little side projects and solo projects that they can just record in a bedroom and put out. We’re not that kind of band. The music that we want to put out is just going to take some time. We want it to live up to that bar we’ve set for ourselves. The debut album stands on its own because of the strength of the songwriting. The production was not very good. You know? People can argue about it all they want but I read all of the criticisms and I read the reviews. The majority consensus is that the production could’ve been better and we as a band agree. So, it’s just going to take time.
Just to be clear, there will be some Solicitor activity over the next year.
Oh yeah, absolutely. For sure!
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