19.11.09

Let me be a woman

Left: Pre-op Cretin, Dan Martinez on right
Right: Post-op Cretin (2/3), Marissa Martinez on left

Decibel's blog has posted an amazing entry by Marissa Martinez, vocalist/guitarist of Cretin. Marissa was once Dan. Over the past few years, Marissa has undergone various surgeries for the gender reassignment process. Her most recent one, and the subject of the blog post, was vaginoplasty. (Decibel writer Jeanne Fury suggested that would make a good grindcore band name. Unsurprisingly, a metal band (Broken Hope) has already used the term in a song.)

Daddy's Little Girl

Andrew Parks' original feature on Martinez (excerpt here, buy issue here) is one of the best pieces of music journalism ever printed. Kudos to him and Fury for breaking and following up on the story. The lyrics of Cretin's much-lauded, Repulsion-worshiping debut, Freakery (Relapse, 2006), are filled with gender and sexual anxiety. Now that Marissa is more or less fully a woman, I wonder what will preoccupy Cretin now. Hopefully Marissa will master the feminine products aisle soon so that she can get back to writing the next Cretin record.

- Cosmo Lee

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wonder if Martinez will still be able to growl like she/he used to, since that clip sounded pretty manly to me.

2:32 PM  
Blogger Andrew Childers said...

in retrospect freakery pretty much sounds like a diary of gender dysmorphia. i can't wait to see what this band will pull out next. they seem to really dig deep when it comes to mining the grotesque (in a faulknerian sense) in life.

4:42 PM  
Anonymous Kevin said...

Fucking LOL...

http://reeelapse.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35991

4:54 PM  
Anonymous Invisible Oranges said...

Ah, Internet warriors.

9:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yes, she will be able to growl like the previous Cretin record. without undergoing tricky throat surgeries it's difficult to change the larynx and the sounds it produces. she may have taken speech therapy to learn to speak in a feminine way but the ability to mimic Carlson is still intact. im sure if you comment on the deciblog, she'll be happy to explain it all.

9:19 AM  

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