Chastain, one of the pioneering bands of the genre that became known as Power Metal in the 1980s, has returned with a blistering, incendiary and anthemic new album, We Bleed Metal, to raucous acclaim from critics and the band’s loyal followers.
Part of what has made the band a cult classic over the years – a band that is seen as uncompromising, and worried more about the purity of their music than the bling and bombast of creating an MTV-friendly image – is the dynamically powerful vocals of Leather Leone.
Many years before the likes of Angela Gossow and her protégé Alissa White-Gluz, Canada’s Kobra Paige, Maria Brink or Cristina Scabbia became household names for fans of more aggressive strains of metal, there was Leather. Eschewing poofy hair-dos, and skimpy outfits, Leone never bartered her feminine charms for commercial success, preferring to let the music David Chastain created and she interpreted do the talking.
Leone’s career began with the San Francisco-based band Rude Girl in the early 1980s before she was recruited for Chastain. Led by the mysterious and mercurial (think Ritchie Blackmore but faster and louder) David T Chastain, the band released a string of critically-acclaimed albums starting with Mystery of Illusion in 1985, through to For Those Who Dare in 1990.
The pressures and a growing disillusionment with the music industry, and the incessant fatigue from an almost constant touring schedule saw Leone leave Chastain and the business after the band’s 1991 world tour.
It took former Rude Girl drummer Sandy Sledge to tentatively lure Leone out of her self-imposed exile with the Sledge/Leather project and the Imagine Me Alive album in 2012. Then Chastain came calling again, as the band reconvened for the 2013 studio album, Surrender to No One.
So why the 20 year break?
“For 20 years I got into animal medicine and animal rescue I got into pit-bull rescue which totally blew my mind and took my breath away. But I went away from music because it was so frustrating for me. Some people have said that I just gave up and that those sorts of comments really dug into me but maybe it seems to outsiders that I did,” Leone explained.
“When Chastain and I amicably split I did come home to northern California and I had some meetings with people. I was orienting myself more to what was considered hardcore music then. It’s where my heart was as a singer but the labels wanted me to go more in a poppy metal vein. Any offer I got was in that area. I was even doing demos for Vixen at one time when they were trying to kind of figure something out. But then I thought, ‘wait a minute; I want to be a real metal chick.’
“But I wasn’t getting offered any of those opportunities, mostly because there were next to no women doing that kind of metal. At the time, I was proud of what I had done with Chastain and I was not going to compromise. There’s no way I was suddenly going to show up in my underwear – it’s just not me. I was thinking, ‘why can’t there be more girl Metallicas out there?’ And of course there is a whole bunch today, which is awesome. I always said why can’t I just be a female James Hetfield and go out on stage in my jeans and sneakers and just blast the hell out of an audience?”
Leone said she went cold turkey from music, rarely even listening to music and refraining from going to see shows for years. She discovered an outlet for her passion and energy through rescuing and rehabilitating dogs, particularly the misunderstood pit bull. She continues to work in animal rescue since her return to music and, in her own words, “get to follow my passions.”
Chastain himself also stopped touring in 1991 and has preferred to just write record and release music as it struck his fancy over the years. The albums Sick Society came out in 1995, followed by In Dementia in 1997 and In An Outrage in 2004.
“Chastain just likes to sit at home, run his label, and write music. Even back in the prime of the band when we were out touring back in the late 1980s, he wasn’t really into touring. He’s actually very shy like a lot of musicians are, and very introverted. We kind of call him the wizard in the castle,” Leone said with a hearty laugh.
“He just got tired of it. He got tired of losing money. He got tired of lack of promotion and having clubs half full sometimes because of it. It sucks that you’re away from your family. And who knows where you’re going to end up playing and what kind of shows you’re going to be doing and what you’re going to get paid. We were never big enough to command a lot of frills and big paydays and have a big entourage around us. Chastain was always kind of a DIY band.
“Dave once said he would rather be at home writing material and watching NBA and Star Trek at his home in Georgia. I used to give him a hard time about because every so often he would tease that he might want to play some shows but I would always call him on it. He gets offers all the time, but the answer is always the same.”
But Leather Leone actually does like performing and touring and has been trying to get out as often as she can, often partnering with other musicians or taking a group of pals out to play selected dates, with a focus on bringing Chastain’s songs to the fans who have stuck with the band for more than three decades.
We Bleed Metal is an old school, straightforward metal call-to-arms for all true believers. It’s stripped down, bare knuckles and unadulterated with fancy layered choruses, and delightfully unencumbered by the modern hard rock clichés. This is an album that could just as easily be played on an old fashioned ghetto blaster or a modern stereo system. It’s potent, to the point, and showcases Leone’s raw, emotive hard-edged rasp. Think Stevie Nicks doing Motorhead.
Leone loves the album but wishes the old-school vibe was also present during the recording process for We Bleed Metal. In this day and age of digital studio technology, the times when bands would hunker down in an old analog recording studio for weeks on end are drawing to a close.
“I do miss going into the big studios, even though they do cost thousands of dollars. What I miss is the atmosphere of everybody going in and hanging out together and everybody feeding off one another as we’re playing,” she said.
“For this album, because we all live in different places and we all record our parts alone, I never actually saw our drummer (Stian Kristoffersen, in the band since 2013), or Mike (bassists Mike Skimmerhorn, an original Chastain member who left in 1989, but returned in 2013). I would just go work with David in his studio. I just miss that camaraderie, especially since the band isn’t actually going to tour.”
Leone grew up in upstate New York and was drawn to music at an early age, with the melodic power of arena rock first grabbing her heartstrings.
“I fell in love with that arena rock thing with the huge vocal and melodic layers, which is funny now because I want to do the total opposite in my own music. I remember when that first Heart album came out, and Fleetwood Mac bringing in Stevie Nicks it was awesome. I was into Boston a lot and then someone turned me onto Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I remember when I was a junior in high school my dad had just started letting me go to concerts, although I really wanted to see Alice Cooper and he wouldn’t let me because of his stage show. And it was hysterical because I opened for him when I was with Chastain a few years later. I just remember him sitting in his dressing room reading Golf Digest,” she said.
“I remember walking into a Blue Oyster Cult show at the War Memorial Arena in Rochester and hearing and feeling that bass drum – it was the same thing with Foghat and REO Speedwagon. I remember feeling the drums reverberate through my body and saying, ‘I have to be a part of this. I have to do this.’”
And then Leone discovered the late, great Ronnie James Dio.
“It was over for me then. It started with his work in Sabbath and then I met him around the time that his first solo album Holy Diver came out. He was it for me. He was so inspirational as an artist, as a singer and as a person. My life and my career changed because of him. I asked him where his voice came from and how it was so powerful and confident and he said mine will come. He called it my peace of mind. He said I would get my peace of mind and just keep going and going,” she said, adding that since his passing in 2010, she refuses to sing any Dio songs live.
“When I came back to music and did the Sledge/Leather project down in L.A., I got to work with long-time Dio band members Jimmy Bain and Scott Warren on the music. At more than one point I had to go into the bathroom and just bawl because it was such a deep experience for me to work with them. It was a great way to re-enter the recording scene for sure.”
Leather Leone is working to secure as many gigs as she can in as many places as people want to hear her. She currently bills herself as ‘Leather’ and performs sets filled with Chastain material was as material from her 1989 solo album Shockwaves and the Sledge/Leather album.
She has appearances at next year’s Ragnarökkr Metal Apocalypsefestival in Chicago and will also be returning to Brazil for some shows. Long-time friend Veronica Freeman, who fronts the band Benedictum has also taken Leone on the road for a few dates as an opening act.
“For me metal music is what I live and breathe. It’s how I express myself. And as the title track for We Bleed Metal says, you either bleed it or you don’t. You can’t fake it. I thought the lyrics for that song were great when David sent them to me. He was talking to me a few months before we started recording and he said the words ‘we bleed metal’ just kept coming into his head and he wondered if it could be a song. I said ‘write away, my wizard friend, write away. Go to your little dungeon and create.’ And we had the song in a couple of days,” she said.
“Metal is just something that’s within us. It’s like asking why do you like the colour purple, or why do you like dogs? Metal is something inside of you, it speaks to you, you bleed it and you feel it. If you see someone else who loves metal it doesn’t matter their age, gender, what they do for a living, you instantly have a bond with them.”
For more information on We Bleed Metal, visit http://www.leviathanrecords.com/webleedmetal.htm
To see what Leather Leone is up to, visit her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/LeatherLeone/
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
