A Love Letter to the Voice That Made Me Submit
This article has been lounging around like an overstayed guest on my desk for weeks. Every time I tried to finish it, I fell down another musical rabbit hole. “If you listen to A, then obviously you need to listen to B, who influenced C, and C practically invented the genre so now you have to go back to 1974...”
Long story short: I intended to move on from glam metal after writing about Mötley Crüe and Poison. Thrash was calling. Speed, aggression, all that good chaos. But instead? Glam metal snuck back in like glitter under your eyelid—irritating, sparkly, and absolutely impossible to ignore.
So here we are.
And today, we’re talking about W.A.S.P.
I tried to write a clean little profile. Failed. Tried to be objective. Failed harder.
Because the truth is: I didn’t fall into a W.A.S.P. rabbit hole—I spiralled. And at the centre of it, grinning like the devil in eyeliner, was Blackie Lawless.
I came for the glam metal nostalgia. I stayed because his voice broke me.
Enter Blackie Lawless: preacher, predator, prophet of sleaze
W.A.S.P. formed in 1982, led by the unholy union of Blackie Lawless and Randy Piper. Lawless, who had already tangled with chaos in New York Dolls, Sister, and London, decided it was time to start his own circus of the damned.
The band would go through more line-up changes than I’ve had emotional breakdowns, but Blackie Lawless? He stayed.
Because of course he did. The man is W.A.S.P. — vocals, bass, rhythm guitar, production, creative direction, moral crisis and all.
And that voice. That’s what got me.
Raspy, snarling, equal parts venom and vulnerability. Blackie doesn’t sing—he possesses. He growls and spits and screams with operatic rage, but then turns around and sings with this aching, melodic sincerity that feels like a punch to the ribs. It’s rude, really.
Shock rock, raw meat, and the glory days of sleaze
W.A.S.P. came screaming out of the early '80s sunset, dragging the corpse of shock rock behind them. Blackie took heavy inspiration from Alice Cooper and KISS, cranking it to eleven with stage shows that included half-naked women on torture racks and raw meat being thrown into the audience like party favours from hell.
Subtle, it was not.
Effective? Absolutely.
Their first three albums—W.A.S.P., The Last Command, Inside the Electric Circus—were pure sleaze-and-leather anthems about women, sex, Satan, violence and death. Basically a teenage boy’s dream journal, screamed over galloping drums and stadium guitars.
But Blackie was never just another glam metal cliché. The man had range—and not just vocally.
Growing up (a little): The Headless Children & The Crimson Idol
By 1989, something had shifted. Blackie took a short break, looked around at the wreckage, and went, “Maybe we write about... I don’t know... the real apocalypse?”
The Headless Children dropped the sex-drenched shock for political venom and social rot. It was sharper, angrier, more grown-up—but still unmistakably W.A.S.P. It also landed their highest Billboard ranking (No. 48 in the US), which is metal-speak for “someone other than your mum bought the record.”
Then came The Crimson Idol (technically a Lawless solo project, but released under the W.A.S.P. name because branding, darling) was where everything clicked.
It was mature. Structured. Emotionally gutted.
Proof that W.A.S.P. could do depth without ditching the eyeliner.
The story of Jonathan—the invisible boy, the unwanted son, the doomed rockstar—is still one of heavy metal’s most haunting arcs. It’s an album that feels like abandonment. Like screaming into mirrors and not recognising the reflection. Like trying to make the world love you back and watching it laugh instead.
It’s not just a classic.
It’s a wound with a tracklist.
Religion, regret, and refusing to play the hits
Blackie Lawless was raised in a Baptist household, rebelled in spectacular glam fashion, and then—because life is a circle of chaos—found religion again in 2009. Since then, he’s famously refused to play one of W.A.S.P.'s most infamous tracks, Animal (F** Like a Beast), live.
It’s polarising. Some call it hypocritical. Others call it integrity. Me? I just think it proves the man has never done anything halfway—not even a spiritual U-turn.
Let’s talk about that voice. That devastating voice.
I have no poker face about this, so let me just say it straight:
Blackie Lawless’s voice is one of the most devastating things I’ve ever heard.
It’s not just a sound. It’s a summoning. He snarls, and your blood picks up tempo. He whispers, and your stomach drops. But when he sings—really sings—with that aching, gravel-slicked sincerity?
Miss You? Sleeping in the Fire? Into The Fire?
When he sings about fire, it’s not a metaphor. It’s a warning label. These songs hurt. They sneak into your headphones when you least expect it, and suddenly you're clutching your chest in the middle of the day like you’ve just remembered every person who ever left you. It’s humiliating. It's transcendent. It’s perfect.
Yesterday I was dancing like a happy idiot through the kitchen to Wild Child. Today I’m sitting in the corner, paralysed by Miss You, whispering "What the actual fuck, Blackie".
There’s something cruel and beautiful in how he delivers these songs. Like he knows the exact nerve to hit and how long to hold pressure. It’s not performance. It’s possession.
In my personal pantheon of “Voices That Will Emotionally Ruin Me,” Blackie sits shoulder to shoulder with Ronnie James Dio and Peter Steele.
You don’t just listen to them. You submit. You let them ruin your day—and thank them for it afterwards.
Final verdict: Absolutely going in the music library
W.A.S.P. was supposed to be a quick stop on the glam nostalgia tour. A little “oh yeah, remember them?”
Instead, I got spiritually slapped across the face by a voice I haven’t stopped thinking about since.
The early stuff? Unapologetically loud and stupid and brilliant.
The later albums? Complex, introspective, soaked in pain and power.
The voice? A lifelong affliction.
So yes, W.A.S.P. is going in the Izzy Izbourne archives.
And Blackie Lawless now lives in that weird, sacred space between heartbreak and euphoria in my music-obsessed brain.
Long live the eyeliner.
Long live the emotional whiplash.
Long live Blackie Lawless.