Frantic Amber – Brutal Death and Murder Becomes Them
Warning: The following interview contains graphic content.
Frantic Amber are some of Stockholm, Sweden’s loudest ladies. Stomping their leathered boots in defiled soil since 2008. Three records in, they’re solidifying themselves as a true bludgeoning force to behold, leaving European audiences with ringing ears and bruised bodies. Though, a little pain and bruises never hurt anyone as long as you’re enjoying the show.
The foursome have unleashed their darkest decadence yet, spewing lyrical blood, violence and brutal murder on record and stage with Death Becomes Her. In the ‘80s, you often bought albums, music unheard based on how cool the cover looked and if there was a cover in 2025 that spilled and spelled out what was inside, it’s this one. The music is as dark, evil, uncomfortable and death-filled as the shrouded in black figure waiting on the boat, steering past heads and bones of fallen men succubus’d to death. Though a trip down the river with this Ferrywoman may not be worth two gold coins.
Vocalist Elizabeth Andrews chose a concept record, researching some of the most violent and sadistic female killers and serial killers in history. Scribing their macabre murders in song, creating death metal that’s educational and definitely rated R, though as Andrews describes, some of these ladies might’ve crossed boundaries even Art The Clown would find appalling. Though she has the metal thrashing machine of guitar Mio Jäger, bassist Madeleine Gullberg-Husberg and drummer Laura Hernandez backing her vocal fury with their own.
How did Andrews choose the lady and subject material for each song? “It was ongoing research and finding candidates. There were a lot of them that didn’t make it into a song. I got inspired on some more than others. It also depended a little on the song. What’s the atmosphere; is it fast and brutal or slower and atmospheric. We had a lot of discussions in the band as well. What do you think? What about her. Everyone was keeping an eye out and giving each other tips.” Eventually she started in depth research on the top picks.
Some stories have more meat on the bones, so to say, literary. Some have been covered more and didn’t inspire her and some had more work for the forensic glove than others. She prefers spontaneous inspiration when it just flows versus trudging along step by step, though both methods work.
Who was the most sadistic and vicious of the chosen few? “That’s a really hard question, they’re all terrible,” Andrews contemplates. “I was quite traumatized just reading about them. I’m quite sensitive. In the beginning it was really hard for me to read all this. It’s real, it really happened to these people. It took a while to desensitize myself, put it further away emotionally, find myself and a balance. It helped getting into the creative part of it. I love writing lyrics, that’s no problem. It’s a weird contradiction I have. So it got easier and easier. Once the words were put in lyric form it became more fictitious. It felt less real and brutal.”
“I’ll take the song “The Butcheress.” It’s about Katherine Knight. She’s not a serial killer. She only killed one. Her modus operandi was so brutal it had to go on the record and everyone agreed. “Andrews had lots of material to work with. “She was a sadistic, one time rage killer from Australia with some cannibalistic tendencies. She was one of the newer ones. Some are from older times like the 1800’s. They’re a lot of serial killers in the 1800s, there was something going on. In 2000, she woke her boyfriend by stabbing him 37 times. He tried to get away obviously. She dragged him back. She was quite big and strong. She was a butcher by trade but had injuries so she retired. Her butcher knives were on display over her bed. She was obsessed with death and her macabre things. All these things they found in her apartment and knew about her.”
She brutally murdered him and meticulously hung his skin up like a one-piece suit in the living room. “She was very skilled with a knife. She hung it on a hook in the freaking living room. How much more brutal could she be? Decapitation was next, followed by cooking it in a pot with vegetables with slices of buttocks for garnishes, with plates prepared. Some articles said, there was a half eaten plate, others said there was meat discarded in the backyard. It was unclear if she ate some it. According to some articles she ate half of it and maybe got sick and threw the rest out. I’m not sure exactly what happened, the crime scene was obviously a mess and the officers that came were traumatized for life. It sounds so macabre I can’t even think about it as a real thing.”
She got caught and was imprisoned for life without parole. “I think she was the first woman to be condemned with that. It shocked everyone. I think she’s still alive in prison.”
Some songs have clean vocals, with others don’t. Andrews says inspiration just struck on certain tunes. On “Angel Maker” I was experimenting with the melody of the first part of the clean singing, the lower part. It was like yeah, it’s a cool idea. Just not for the chorus, it was too much clean singing. We discussed and came up with a whole new part. Where it goes to a different part, more melodic, calm and slow, I do the whole singing and go up to the more high pitched.”
Was “Bloodbath” recorded to be the opener? “The actual order of the songs came quite late. We were wrapping up the album. Had to hand it in, do the track list and had a discussion, try this or that. We decided on “Bloodbath,” because we wanted the record to start with a punch in the face. It fit well with the intro. We wanted to start off high energy and high speed before slowing down. “Death Becomes Her,” is almost a ballad. It’s super guttural low end, the singing like, in church, with the blast beats and organ, everything at once. That was an idea we’d been discussing for a long time. I’m so happy it could fit in.” They found a brutal balance for everything eventually.
When it comes to metal Countess Bathory is well trodden lyrical content but Andrews gives her a different perspective, more fact then lore. “Historians are in agreement that some things are made up. She was not a nice person. A lot of the things she was accused of, there was no solid proof. A lot of her accomplices were tortured into confessions. It’s hard to know what was true with a lot of hearsay and under pressure stories. It’s been confirmed that she didn’t bathe in blood. That got added a thousand years after the fact. She was a widow with massive wealth. All her rivals wanted her estate.” She was covered in so much blood after the murders it looked like she’d bathed in blood.
Most lyrics tell a very gory specific tale of the songs subject and history. “They pretty much all had horrible childhoods and traumatic pasts. A lot of people have trauma and don’t become serial killers.”
The lyric video for “Bloodbath” was an interesting concept. “We ordered our lyric video and that was the result.” “Angle Maker” was also a lyric video and material was found online. Before the album they released three new videos. “Jolly Jane,” “Hell’s Belle” and “Black Widow.”
“Black Widow” is a category song. Not anyone specific, it’s about the category of black widows, women that kill their lovers for money. Hearing, going to the bank to cash insurance checks growled death metal style was different. “I try and do that on several songs. Especially sense its super dark material. I like to have a little tongue and cheek, a little word play or something to make you smile or laugh.”
Is “Jolly Jane,” the circle pit song live? “It’s a fun song to do vocally. The tempo various, it gives a more old school death metal feel. We also did a cover of “Hammer Smashed Face” by Cannibal Corpse back in the day and it gives me those vibes.” Jane is about Jane Toppan, a killer nurse with a sick, sadistic passion for killing patients who had no chance of recovery. Though she confessed to 31 murders, she’s believed to have committed over 100 in Massachusetts between 1895 and 1901. Toppan was believed to get sexual excitement from watching her victims writhing in the throes of death.
The ending growl in “Gore Candy” was as long as she could hold it. “I do it live also. Every time is probably not as long as the record. It’s a controlled environment and I’m standing still. I have pretty high stamina, I can do pretty long growls live, especially after reputation.”
“Gore Candy” was Jäger’s love child idea. “I really like this kind of song, everything’s crazy. It talks, total crazy murder, then it’s over. It’s a homage to grind, having a swag that’s really in your face, fast and brutal. Then it’s over. As a listener you say, huh? What happened? It’s a really fun song and super fast. It’s 248 BPM when I was recording the vocals, it took awhile. I practiced all the word combinations so I wouldn’t stumble. Try and make you hear what I’m singing. The lyrics are important to me.”
“In The Garden Of Bones” had some very creepy audio shoveling and breathing. It was Andrews’ idea to have longer sound effects in that song. “It’s a mixture of sound effects. Some of it I recorded. I wanted it to sound like she was dragging the body in her garden. That’s me dragging my foot through rainy grass, on my phone. I tried to get the sound to shine through. The digging was free stock I found. The ‘thump’ is stock I found together with me jumping on the grass. I wanted more impact so I enhanced my jump. It didn’t sound heavy enough. I live near the train so, if you listen in the background you can hear the train go by. Its super coincidence and I liked it. It didn’t sound like a train, it sounded distorted. It turned out really cool. It sounds like something else is happening then it goes back to the song. It goes to clean guitar picking then this ballad feel, then back to brutal.”
The song ends with a super creepy clean vocal of a child’s squeaking whisper. “That was what I was going for, super creepy. She was evil, an old lady running a boarding house for sick and homeless people. People on social security, then she stole from them and poisoned them. If they gave her too much hassle, she killed them, dismembered and buried them in the backyard. They found lots of bones and parts when they dug the garden.”
The voice is done more in the third person. “I tell the story of the boarding house. Where we are, what’s going on. I wanted it to have a creepier feel, like you were going into this house as it stands. It still stands today. This couple bought and renovated it. They have it like a tourist attraction almost. Why would you want to live in that house? I wouldn’t go near it. The chorus is a warning for the people living there.”
“Hell’s Belle” aka La Porta Ghoul, Belle Gunness was from La Porta Indiana. “This was one of the primetime eras for killing. She was a type of black widow and an especially brutal one. She’d put ads in the newspaper. The personals ads back then, the lonely hearts club, looking for (whatever). She already had money, killed off her husband’s and collected insurance from her second husband and burnt down their candy shop. Some of her kids had mysteriously died. Death surrounded her. The way these women kill is with poison. Maybe it’s weird that all her husband’s died. She collects insurance each time.”
She lured unsuspecting men to her farm saying ‘let’s combine our fortunes’ and promises of a good life. “She asked them to bring their money which should’ve raised at least an eyebrow, or two. She was apparently a very charming woman.” She offered a meal then finished them off, kissing them deadly with poisoned coffee or arsenic.
The real horror and sadism was yet to come while she watched them convulse and choke to death taking an axe or meat clever finishing them off. “I think it was done in the basement. She would dismember them. She also had an accomplice, a working hand on the farm. Bury the body parts and feed some to the pigs, pretty brutal. She burned down the farm and disappeared, money was withdrawn.” Multiple bodies of children were found along with a shorter woman’s body decapitated.
Some eye witness’s said they’d seen her running away on a wagon. Andrews says, one of the lonely men’s brothers went looking for him. People speculated she faked her death, disappeared and took all the riches with her. “I even read an account that there was a woman that knew her and was friends with her, she wrote the investigator to confess. She died before he could talk to her. The only witness that knew something died before he could talk to her. The accomplice farmhand got convicted for arson and some murders. He wanted to confess on his death bed but was not recorded, a brutal story and an ice cold woman.”
The video for “Hell’s Belle” was filmed in an old Swedish 1600’s barn with permission. “The pics are original and super duper old. It was around the time that she was active. Must have been the 1800’s and some of it is older, 400 years old. We got a little tour around it.” The rocking chair and old desk were still intact, museum quality. The man that inherited the land found all these tools and antiques hanging them on the walls.
It was perfect for a video with cool vintage barn atmosphere and super cold too, being late December. “You can see it when I’m singing clean, just before the fire. It was COLD, but a really cool place. We were super stoked to have that possible.” They recorded “Jolly Jane” there too, making a makeshift stage, with banner.
The torches were Andrews’ brainchild wanting a visual passage-like catwalk illuminating the cold, frigid night. The videographer understood what they wanted capturing their visions with homemade lamp oiled burning staffs held high. “We only had two takes and the fire didn’t last that long. We had to rush it. We did three videos in one weekend. It was a lot but turned out super cool. We had the fire cannons on the black metal part, all the fire comes in. It was fun to play around with that, super cool to have this tiny dream come true.”
“Black Widow” was filmed in an old corn silo on less than steady ground. Only one band member could stand and perform at a time with the camera standing outside the room. The visuals very cool and whatever they’re standing on could be interrupted as victim’s ashes, bones, or leftover corn. “It was mostly a bonus video we spontaneously said, yeah let’s do it.”
Were the images and vintage pictures in the “Angel Maker” lyric video legit? “Some of them are actually. The video maker had some images and clippings, images of Amelia Dyer one of the most prolific and well known killers. It was mostly stock but connected to the song. I based “Angel Maker” off three different women. Dyer from England, killed hundreds of children, they never got convicted of them all. Dagmar Johanne Amalie Overbye was Danish, I’m Danish, there were all these old newspaper clippings scanned in Old Danish.” Her deeds and crimes actually changed foster care laws. All newborn children had to be registered in the national registry. Andrews says that detail is only found in the Danish articles.
Andrews says the gruesome fate of so many children was tough to read. “How can you murder an infant for money? They were just farming them, like cattle.” The third was an Angel Maker from Sweden. “I kinda mixed them together with some other methods.”
It goes without saying this is the most, evil, brutal, dark, melancholy record they’ve done thus far, giving veteran death metal acts a run for violent, brutal lyrically imagery. “That’s what we wanted to do.” Their last record Bellatrix was brutal but more heroic lyrically telling stories of history’s most fierce and respected female warriors. “We wanted to celebrate the heroine’s of history, the real women. Then we had riffs and ideas that were a little too dark and brutal, that didn’t fit that record.” They more than succeeded in their dark true crime endeavor.
In an increasing era of AI imagery, they take pride in finding artwork done by human hands. The cover was found online, almost already perfect. “We had a discussion. It’s super easy to generate something with AI and we don’t indorse that. That would be the same if AI made the music instead of us. I don’t like it. I think art should be for humans, let robots do all the boring stuff.” They found the perfect artist on Instagram. The person in the boat was a man at first then they asked to feminize it. A lot of the imagery fit the concept. “She’s death, claiming all the bodies. The head on the boat, looks like a child. The man is hanging from the tree after being killed by the woman. Skulls, a sea red with bodies, and gore. It just fit super melancholy dark, sad and brutal at the same time. Inside the booklet you can see more artwork, trying to match something to each song. We’re super stoked about the art.”
The record was played start to finish on April 4 at the release party on the release date. “When you perform them for the first time it’s always interesting and nervous trying not to fuck anything up. We held it in Stockholm. I had this idea to incorporate some costumes. Staff and skulls and dresses with hoods, it turned out pretty cool. Now I have more things to do costume wise for “Death Becomes Her” and “Hell’s Belle” then back to normal. I used to be a ballerina so it’s cool for me to incorporate these small things. First time I’ve done that. Some of the intros and outros are long enough to get changed.” They play one song from Bellatrix and one from debut Burning Insight on the encore.
To pull off deep growls and clean vocals so effortlessly she uses a false cord growl, grunt or guttural technique. “It takes force but not as much as people think. It’s very controlled. I have to switch very fast. I’ve practiced that so much, the switch back and forth. It can knock you way off pitch if you’re not careful. I do my best to stay on pitch when I’m clean singing. We have more songs with clean singing. I’m more comfortable with it.”
They have some festivals planned for the summer. They just signed with a new manager and they’re trying to find a good booking agency. “We’ve been doing everything ourselves so far, it’s a lot. Trying to get to the next level, we need a foot in the door.”
They’ve attempted to hit the US a few times. There was a five week tour booked on the Bellatrix run but didn’t happen. “We reserved the whole summer for that.”
Andrews would like to do more Bellatrix style songs in the future. Time will also tell if she ever does a song with all clean vocals. “I wouldn’t say never, if it fit. It’s not impossible or promised either.”
If you’re a fan of death metal, killer women and killer women thrashing out on stage with murderous intent to the front row and everyone standing behind, Frantic Amber’s itching to see you. Death Becomes Her is a fascinating, dark, violent opus to some of the worst, most sadistic women to ever live. It’s a lyrical deep dive equivalent to an unrated horror movie/true crime documentary you can’t unsee. With Andrews sinister growl leading the narrative and the ladies thrashing alongside the fallen bones and bodies. Buffalo Bill and Leatherface ain’t got shit on these dark vixens of grisly true crime gore.
Words – Mike Ritchie
Band Image – Kenneth Brandt