OmenBringer
When vocalist and lyricist Molly Marie Kent plotted the grassroots rise of OmenBringer during the COVID-19 lockdown, she dreamed of making metal shows in Nashville more gender-inclusive with a band that’s danceable and accessible yet witchy and heavy.
“We have all types of ladies that come to our shows,” Kent says. “We have straight gals, queer gals, trans gals. We try to get all of them up to the front of the stage. I tell them, ‘Come up to the front — ladies to the front.’ Everybody kind of moves out of the way and lets these girls come up and be in the front, which is so much fun to flirt and engage with them from the stage. They write our logo, our rune, on their chest and come take pictures with me afterwards. It’s just really fun cultivating this coven, because then I have all of these nice girls that I send memes to on Instagram.”
As Kent’s Bikini Kill-esque stage banter reminds us, metal is not the only outsider rock genre that’s guilty of historically being a boys’ club. It just happens to be the space in which Kent’s working to change a decades-old narrative.
“If the venue ever has sketchy parking or anything like that, we always tell the girls, ‘Hey, any of us will help you get to your car safely,’” Kent adds. “People know that and know that they’re going to have a good time. And they know they can bring their girlfriends and they’re going to have a good time. That’s how we’ve grown so much organically, is just lots of community love and love back and forth, reciprocating from the stage to the audience.”
Kent has established that OmenBringer is for everyone with the help of bandmates Cory Cline (guitar), Mario Galati (bass), Spookie Rollings (rhythm guitar) and Tyler Boydstun (drums).
“They’re all such strong, wonderful people and kindhearted, good guys that are not only kind and wonderful but extremely talented,” Kent says. “Everybody in my band plays more than one instrument or can sing or can write or knows how to record.”
OmenBringer built enough local support since debuting in 2022 to land at the top of the Scene’s 2024 readers’ poll for Best Band. They did so by chasing rock stardom with the stage theatrics and memorable hooks and riffs of classic rock — not by pigeonholing themselves into any extreme metal niche.
“I always describe to everybody that we are the next KISS,” Kent says. “We are taking up the torch from KISS — like, performative and metal but party music and rock ’n’ roll. We’re out here to make a big impression and give people what they want — if they want what I want, that is.”
OmenBringer’s growing fandom has been maintained in part because each local show gets billed as a can’t-miss event by Kent, a supreme self-promoter.
“We have people that have been to every show that just love us,” she says. “All of them will be able to attest that we have never played the same show twice. We do different songs at every show. We do different things. We have gimmicks that we do for songs and stuff, but we really try to keep it fresh for our local audience. We’re going to start touring this year a little bit, so we’ll come up with a more cohesive stage show that we just do every time when we’re out of town. But we’ll always keep it really spicy and fresh in town because there’s so much competition, so you have to stand out and be good and have something more to offer than you’re just going to get up there and play.”
