I have to wonder what your experience with female fronted metal is, if that has been your reaction to it - perhaps your forthcoming review will shed some light on that question for me.
Well, for starters, as I've pointed out before, I think most metal is crap because almost any one band you pick sounds exactly like the next (just as about any band in any genre does). Prolific copy-catting puts me off a certain sound/style very quickly. In my experience, FFM to me is just about the worst of it, because
1) All vocalists sound exactly the same
2) Not only do all musical parts sound the same, they're also among the most standard riffs and progressions you can think of
3) I can't relate to the general mystical/fantastical/goth vibe the most visible of these bands try to convey (a fellow student of mine during my audio engineering course dubbed the style 'Efteling rock', after our most famous national amusement park which started out from a sort of permanent exhibition of famous fairy tales - since then I had to stop taking the entire scene seriously altogether)
What I have experienced from FFM, centered around bands like Within Temptation, is that it's boring, rehashed music that contains no genuine emotion, only the suggestion of one, and specifically one that will appeal to the developing sensibilities of sixteen-year-olds. Substitute the distorted guitars for some electronic samples, and you have pop music.
That being said, I was quite impressed with
Vuur and bought their new album to give to my son next week (our version of Christmas, gift-giving-wise) - so there's some hope.
if you have an interest in women in metal, allow me to shamelessly plug this project i put together a few years ago
Hot diggity that's one impressive list. I'm pretty confident there's something on there that will prove my assumptions wrong - there just has to be - but digging into
that is pretty daunting D: