These are good melodic thrash jams that come with an interesting issue:
For Cordisco, as for many transfeminine musicians, the prospect of giving voice to trans issues through music can pose a problem. While estrogen does not have any significant effects on the voice, testosterone causes vocal cords to thicken permanently. This means that beyond expensive and invasive surgeries that are not without risk, transfeminine people who undergo hormone therapy after their initial puberty cannot expect their vocal cords to change. While voice training helps many learn to speak and sing in ways that may present to others as more feminine, the process of voice feminization can be expensive and demanding. Because of this, many transfeminine people learn instead to find comfort in their voices through a mix of adjustment, self-acceptance, and radical defiance.
“It is very personal in that way,” Cordisco says. “I did have some trepidation at first like ‘Okay, my voice sounds very angry and very traditionally masculine. Is this something I should be worried about?’” But as she continued working, the concern dissipated. “The more I did it, the more I stopped caring. This is about liberation, and this is about empowerment. I’ve been doing thrash vocals for 18 years, and the whole point of my transitioning and the trans liberation movement is to say to hell with the gender binary and what we ascribe as feminine and masculine and to not be bound by these rules. Then it became very clear that this is what I’m gonna do and this is how I’m gonna do it and I’m gonna let myself feel good about it.”
I did wonder about this when I heard the hardcore band
G.L.O.S.S., who put out a very vicious album that is about trans issues but has vocals that are traditionally considered masculine-sounding.