This is Karina Utomo.
She's the front-woman for a band called High Tension
and she's famous for this:
Today, I'm meeting the woman behind the roar.
-Hello -Hey.
That's your dog.
I'm friendly.
I sort of didn't expect you to live here, I don't know what I expected.
Did you think I lived in a basement?
Some kind of dungeon.
How are you making heavy metal music in this tranquil setting?
I feel like it's very connected to
metal in a way, because we're surrounded by decay.
Now you didn't grow up in Australia.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in Jakarta.
Growing up there was very much a focus on embracing traditional culture.
I guess my fascination with guitar based music was from a Guns N' Roses cassette.
I still recall having my face on the cold tiles and listening over and over again.
What were some of your earliest memories of Australia?
We arrived in the middle of winter
and I remember we had to go to Kmart to buy thermals.
I didn't speak a world of English.
And I remember turning on the TV and going,
"Holy shit there's no subtitles."
I think it was just trying really hard to fit in.
My first day of school the only English I knew was, 'What's your name?'
So I just used that,
as my like, making friends line.
How do you go from listening to metal to singing metal?
I think the first time that I felt compelled to want to learn,
was when I was seeing bands live and,
It's like, to be able to create that volume and the rawness,
when the voice distorts in that way.
It's so immersive and it almost like sucks you in I guess.
What drew me in was that sort of sheer power.
I think everybody has repressed rage, whether they
tap into it or not.
With things that you feel either sad about
or frustrated about, that is something that you can't just push down.
Much of Karina's rage came from her family's experiences on returning to Indonesia as a teenager.
It was 1998,
and the Asian financial crisis saw parts of the country engulfed by rioting,
violence and turmoil.
It was really full on.
Like the cassette store less than a kilometre from my house,
that was entirely burnt to the ground.
And my parents were still in the city,
they couldn't get home that night so they had to
sleep in the office and just stay somewhere that was safe.
A lot of violence targeted ethnic Chinese and although Karina's family weren't,
her father was often mistaken as one.
I was just really afraid of my father getting targeted.
People were scared that was a really horrible time and I think
the most confronting thing was to see that very
racism basically and what it turned into.
When we're performing and to be able to execute and recreate that volume,
I feel like what I'm seeing is part of another realm.
It's very visual and I can feel and see the things that
I'm thinking about and singing about I guess.
I feel like I'm in a bit of a trance or something.
And I think that's why I love death metal.
Was it challenging being a woman in heavy metal music?
Growing up in Canberra, there we're very few women especially playing in these types of bands.
So I was really afraid that
I wasn't going to be taken seriously.
These are like
guys that are like,
ripped and I was really afraid that I'd be really shit at it.
Now it's like, there's so many incredible women
being absolutely brutal
and I think that's the spirit of punk and metal is to feel less afraid.