“Constricting like a heart attack
A mythomaniac on the loose in the streets
Blood boiling with the burning heat
Of caustic defeat, now there’s no turning back”
From “The Race” by Arch Enemy
Before Alissa White-Gluz became one of the most notable voices in heavy metal as the singer of Arch Enemy, music was simply a family affair – throughout her early years she put on shows with her parents, using whatever instruments were available. “I’ve done music as a hobby either in musical theater or just jamming with friends pretty much for as long as I can remember,” White-Gluz told me. “Playing with my sister – we always had musical instruments lying around the house.”
What was also a family affair for White-Gluz was being vegetarian. “I am one of the few but very lucky people who grew up in a vegetarian household. So, I was vegetarian since birth along with my mother, sister, and brother,” she said.
White-Gluz’s mother explained to White-Gluz that, unfortunately, not everyone was accepting of vegetarianism. “My mom, for example, went vegetarian when she was thirteen, so, she herself has been vegetarian for close to 45 years, 50 years,” White-Gluz recalled. “And when she first went vegetarian, the kids at school were teasing her and calling her ‘vegeterrible’ because they didn’t know what vegetarian even meant.”
The house wasn’t completely vegetarian; White-Gluz’s father ate meat and her parents were very careful to let White-Gluz decide what path was best for her. “My mom always told me, ‘you can eat like your dad if you want or you can eat like me, it’s totally up to you.’ And I remember at one point, my dad suggested that I try eating meat because I had never actually tried meat,” she recalled. “He put some in my hand, like a piece of salami or something which totally grosses me out right now. But at the time I was like, I don’t know what this is.
“And I remember asking my mom, ‘What is this?’”
White-Gluz’s mother was not deliberately graphic in her description of how meat is procured, but she didn’t pull any punches either. “She said, ‘That’s a piece of cow.’ And I was like, ‘How do they take the piece of cow?’” White Gluz said. “And she said, ‘Well, they kill the cow and then they cut the body. And when you open the body it kind of looks like that in there and they take it out and eat it.’ And she wasn’t saying it in a gruesome way. She wasn’t using terms like they brutally slaughter the cow and slit its throat. She just told me exactly what it was.”
By having the choice to decide for herself, White-Gluz was able to think it through and own her vegetarianism as her choice. “I was so confused by this, I remember being like, well, the cow needs that – I don’t need that. So I didn’t’ eat it,” she explained. “And that was a moment when I reconfirmed for myself that I was vegetarian because it made sense to me and not just because I was raised that way.”
Unfortunately, school proved not to be as accepting of an environment as both teachers and students struggled to understand White-Gluz’s vegetarianism. “I do remember at school, sometimes there’d be pizza days or field trips and I would always be refusing the food because it wasn’t vegetarian and the teachers would be very confused by this. Thinking about it now, if you see a 6-year-old kid saying, ‘No thank you. I’m a vegetarian,’ maybe you wouldn’t know what to make of it. But I was raised and informed very early on about what food is,” she said. “And in elementary school, I remember some kids teasing me about it. They would try to put their meat sandwiches in my face and I was just grossed out by it because I knew what it was.
“So I would get offended by it and cry — I was a little kid.”
But White-Gluz was undeterred and became curious not only about where meat came from but also where eggs and milk came from. “When I was 12 or 13, this is also before the internet I should add, so I don’t think I had a computer or access to the internet. I started hearing a little bit here and there about how cheese was made and how eggs were made,” she said. “I thought about it and through logical deduction, I was like, wait a minute, we all know that milk is only made when you’re pregnant and you have a baby and you only make the milk as long as the baby needs it. So these cows must be constantly impregnated but where are all the babies going?
“And I was like, wait a minute — something is not adding up here.”
“And then I thought about the sheer number of chickens that must be laying eggs for someone to be able to go to the store and buy a dozen eggs for 3 dollars or whatever it is,” White-Gluz explained. “So, I decide I wanted to do a little bit more research. My sister is 3 years older than me. She was already starting to play shows herself and was exposed to vegan musicians. She mentioned this word vegan to me and so I was like ‘okay — this is a thing. I’m not imagining this … other people have thought this way too.’”
The discovery of kindred spirits only steeled White-Gluz’s resolve to learn more. “So, then I started doing research on it by getting books at the library. And actually calling farms and writing letters to PETA and the World Wildlife Fund – writing paper letters and doing research the old fashioned way,” she said. “And what I realized is that I was right in my assumption that there was suffering going on to produce animal products, even animal products that didn’t directly involve killing the animal to produce meat.
“I pretty much overnight was like, I don’t want to support that.”
White-Gluz turned to veganism and began to rapidly change her diet. And this meant giving up many of the foods that she loved.
“At this point, we’re going back 17 years now – there were not a lot of vegan options. Even finding soymilk was really difficult. And I basically kissed all the foods that I liked goodbye and I was fine with it,” White-Gluz described. “I really love ice cream but I can’t eat that anymore because I know where that came from so goodbye. I love chocolate but from now on, I’m only going to have dark chocolate and that’s okay.”
As time went on, however, White-Gluz began to realize that many of the foods that she had previously loved were available in vegan form. “As the years passed, I started seeing vegan chocolate and vegan ice cream popping up. And I looked up recipes for vegan cakes and cookies and that kind of stuff and ways to replace eggs in baked goods and it became so much easier than what I had initially anticipated. It’s such a natural part of life that I don’t even think about it,” she said.
“It’s totally natural to me to be vegan.”
While White-Gluz embraced her identity as being vegan, she recalled her early school experiences being vegetarian and decided that it was perhaps better to keep her veganism to herself. “As I grew up, for a really long time, I wouldn’t even tell people I was vegan. I would say I have food allergies or I’m not hungry or I would just find another way because I didn’t want to open the door to all the questions and all the judgment that it entails,” she explained.
“For a long time, I wouldn’t use the ‘v’ word.”
But that reticence changed for White-Gluz, who recognized that just as she had been treated poorly in school, other vegans were being mistreated. She realized that by being upfront about her veganism, she had the opportunity to challenge the very stereotypes that perpetuated the poor treatment of vegans.
“It’s funny that people think that vegans are judging them because really it goes the other way. As the years passed and I met more and more people who were vegan, I realized that by using the word vegan I could spread the message of veganism purely by describing it in those everyday situations,” White-Gluz explained. “Now, I tend to use it more when someone offers me food that’s not vegan. I’ll take that opportunity to explain that I’m vegan and what that means that they don’t know.”
White feels that there has been much progress since her mom was called “vegeterrible.” “I think that with the way that times are changing now, it’s becoming much more accepted. But now, it’s a very widespread word and you can it find all over the place, even in steakhouses you’ll find vegetarian options. And I don’t think it will be too long before veganism goes the same way,” she said.
And while White-Gluz has been learning about and dedicating herself to veganism, she has also been working hard at building a career in music. “I started doing it more – I wouldn’t say professionally – but actually playing real shows for people other than my parents. I started doing that when I was I think 17,” she said.
“I’m thirty now and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
White-Gluz was soon putting together different bands to explore her art and craft. “I had three bands before that but they didn’t really go anywhere. They were small bands that I had for under a year each,” she said.
Through determination and hard work, White-Gluz has been able to turn music from a fun hobby into a full-time career. “I’ve basically been working more and more in this field ever since. Because the more work you put in, the more work you get. Which I think is the case with any art. The more work you put in, the more people will recognize you and the more demand there will be for your art,” White-Gluz explained. “Now, I finally do music full time for a band called Arch Enemy and I also occasionally play with another band called Kamelot.”
Interestingly, White-Gluz has found that as she explored extreme forms of metal, she recognized that heavy metal musicians and fans often face the same stereotypes as vegans. “I think that overall metalheads are misunderstood quite largely in general society – metalheads are some of the most sophisticated, intelligent, forward-thinking people there are because even just in their choice of music, they are not afraid to rebel against the norm,” she said.
White-Gluz explains how metal music differs from mainstream popular music in forming a community of fans and musicians. “Metal music is generally not played on the radio so you have to go out of your way to seek out the music especially in the days before satellite radio. I remember meeting someone maybe a few years ago – someone that I’m friends with now– but when I met him and I told him that I was in a band – he was like, ‘Cool, what are some of your songs?’” White-Gluz explained. “And he couldn’t understand that I was in a successful band that wasn’t on the radio. ‘How come I’ve never heard of your band if you’re touring and playing shows?’ Because to him, the only music was what was hand fed to him on the radio. He didn’t know that there was a whole subculture of music outside of what is popularly accepted.”
White-Gluz appreciates being part of a community that thinks ‘outside the box.’ “I think that metal is a great stomping ground for great minds, for people who already have outside the box ideas; it takes a weirdo to be a metalhead and being a weirdo is a great thing. I think that all metalheads – the fans and the musicians – we’re all weird in our own way,” she explained. “You’ll find that a lot of these musicians are also great painters or they have a degree in architecture or are into advanced mathematics – stuff that you wouldn’t expect.”
Because metal-heads tend to be non-conformists, it makes perfect sense to White-Gluz that many people who embrace metal would also embrace veganism. As examples, prominent artists such as Mark Greenway of Napalm Death as well as Lindsay Schoolcraft of Cradle of Filth are outspoken vegans.
“I feel that a lot of us have these really expansive minds that we can’t just accept what everyone else accepts. We need to pave our own path. And by having that kind of a mind, you are one step closer to being able to understand the importance of veganism,” White-Gluz described. “It really is a lot of us – just in my band alone, there’s only one who isn’t vegetarian. I think it’s probably a shock to most people that these people who play super aggressive angry music are some of the most compassionate people on earth. In my head, it makes sense because metalheads have that different mindset to begin with.”
In fact, White-Gluz feels that much of why people don’t embrace veganism is because of conformity. “Honestly, I think that what it comes down to is lack of education and over-conditioning. You can tell somebody that a baby cow gets slaughtered for you to drink its milk. And they’ll be like, aw—that’s really sad and that sucks,” she explained. “And you can show them a video of a baby cow being torn away from their mother and put in a veal crate – maybe they’ll stop drinking milk for a couple of days. But they’ll probably still eat milk in muffins and things like that without even thinking about it. You can probably even show footage of the baby cow being slaughtered and the mother cow howling for her baby and a mother cow on a rape rack. And maybe they will stop for a little bit but then the images will fade out of their minds just like any images from any horror movie would fade out of their minds. They will go back to the ways that they were conditioned to eat.
“So, I think that a lot of people do care about animals but “everyone does it” so they still don’t see it as wrong, which is a very scary form of crowd mentality.”
White-Gluz puts animal agriculture into a historical context to explain why we are so conditioned to accept harming animals. “Only since the industrial revolution has animal agriculture taken this extreme of a leap. And even if people have been consuming animal products for years that still doesn’t mean that an animal wasn’t harmed and killed in the process of creating those products,” she said. “So, I think it takes a really strong mind to step out of the crowd and analyzed the reality of a situation.”
But she is hopeful that people will start to have what she calls “eureka” moments. “I think there’s probably a bit of a eureka moment that happens where people are like, ‘wait a second, I’ve been doing that all these years. I’ve been killing animals and torturing animals’,” she described. “And once they are able to make that connection of themselves to that process rather than just as being a consumer in a store, I think that’s when most people would be ready to make the changes required to live a cruelty-free life.”
For her part, White-Gluz will continue to live her life to set an example. And as she continues to create new albums and tour with Arch Enemy, she knows she has a powerful platform to share her message. For example, she discusses animal rights as well as human rights in the song “The Race,” on Arch Enemy’s 2017 album Will to Power, which Arch Enemy will be performing on the band’s ongoing world tour. “There’s a song called ‘The Race,’ which is the first song on the album … It pretty directly addresses not only animal rights but also human rights in general, and how we’re all sort of running this race to be the best and the top of the food chain.” she explained. “People have this concept in their heads that being vegan is this luxury lifestyle reserved only for rich upper-class white people. And it’s totally untrue because actually, the luxury products are the animal products. Animal products require so many more resources in terms of land, water supply.”
Ultimately, she knows that she has a strong voice that will help change people’s minds about veganism. And she will help educate people who want to listen.
“I guess what it comes down to is just, in all walks of life, I would encourage people to think for themselves. And now that we live in an age where you can easily access anything just by going on the internet, do your research. The facts are out there,” she said. “If you don’t want to believe someone because you think they are being a “preachy vegan” or because you hate PETA, that’s fine. But these are facts, this is not stuff we made up, it’s not a religion based on faith. It’s based on reality – even the departments of agriculture will give you these facts because this is the truth. There’s no denying this. When it comes down to it, the only person that can make a difference is the individual because by paying for a product you are voting for that product to remain in existence.
“The power of the individual is a very strong thing.”
