Otep Shamaya’s return to music

Otep: 6 p.m. Saturday; State Theatre, 687 Central Ave. N., St. Petersburg; $20; 727-895-3045; statetheatreconcerts.com

Anyone who has followed the band Otep knows frontwoman Otep Shamaya is no shrinking violet. She’s smart, informed, opinionated and plenty outgoing -- particularly on stage and on album.

And because she is the main songwriter, because the group has been through a string of personnel changes that have left her as the sole original member of Otep -- and last but not least, because the band is named after her, there’s a tendency to see Otep and the group’s music as being entirely her baby.

And without a doubt, Shamaya is the leader and main creative force in her band. But Shamaya said she’s not necessarily a go-it-alone control freak, as some might assume.

A case in point is the latest Otep album, “Generation Doom,” where Shamaya found a collaborator who was confident and strong willed enough to challenge her -- producer Howard Benson. 

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In a recent phone interview Shamaya pointed as an example to a moment when Benson questioned one of the verses in the song “Down,” telling her she should re-write the verse to make it stronger. 

“I’d never had anybody do that before, challenge me like that before,” Shamaya said. “He could have let it go, like any other (producer) would do. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. And that’s what makes him Howard. It was really a joy to work with him. I learned so much. I enjoy being challenged. I think that’s one of the things that may surprise a lot of people, but I really enjoy collaborating with other artists and other writers. I want to be challenged and I want to be inspired and I want to do the same for them.”

That Shamaya even got to go through that experience with Benson would have seemed unlikely just a couple of years ago.

Retirement  

In January 2013, as Otep released its sixth album, “Hydra,” Shamaya announced it would be the band’s album and she was retiring from music. 

“I think at the time I was very serious about leaving music,” she said. “I had kind of gotten tired of what was happening in the music industry, you know, all of that. It didn’t have the same magic for me that it had before. So I was at the time, when I decided and made that announcement that this is my last record and I’m retiring from music, I (meant it). I had been doing it for a long time, a decade, and I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. I didn’t want to fake it. And I was tired of the music industry, the executives and so forth who were sitting there in their big comfortable lounges and were trying to tell me what my message should be and trying to tell me what my fans mean to me and trying to tell me what genre we’re supposed to be in.” 

Although Otep toured behind “Hydra,” for a time, Shamaya made good on her words. 

She did voiceovers for movies, television and video games (including “The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies” and the popular Playstation game ‘The Last of Us”) and also wrote a book of short stories, “Movies in My Head.” 

But circumstances eventually turned Shamaya back toward music. 

“It was a very organic thing that sort of happened. It wasn’t anything that I had planned. It wasn’t contrived in any way,” Shamaya said. “We just had been on the road and we started playing again. Sort of the music, the poetry, started to come back. I was going through a lot of turmoil during this time. My dog had gotten sick. I had gone through a really devastating breakup. Losing my best friend and my partner and my lover and my confidant, all in one person, was gone now and I was dealing with a sick dog all alone. So I really was very, very emotional and depressed and angry and resentful. I didn’t know what to do with it. So I started writing again. I just started putting those feelings onto paper, and those poems, I started to hear melodies and from those melodies, that began songs and I knew the spirit of music had returned to me.”

Back to the music  

Working with Ari Mihalopoulos, Otep’s guitarist since 2011, Shamaya put together a new batch of songs, thinking she would self-release an album. This time, she’d make exactly the kind of music she wanted, with no one outside of the band around to try and change a thing. 

Instead, Napalm Records approached Shamaya about releasing a new Otep album, offering exactly what she wanted -- total artistic freedom. 

Then things got even better when Benson, a two-time Grammy winner for producer of the year whose credits include Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry, Rascal Flatts and Third Day, surfaced as a candidate to produce the new album. 

Shamaya went to visit Benson, tour his studio and meet his team, and then came a moment of truth. 

“We get into the control room,” Shamaya said. “And he says ‘Enough of the particulars. You’ve seen how we do things here. You understand how we do it and what we’re going to do. You’ve seen the bands that I’ve worked with. Are you willing to change what you say and how you say it if you work with me?’ My stomach kind of dropped and I was like ‘Ah s---, OK, here it is.’ I was just like ‘No, I’m not.’ And he’s like ‘Great, let’s do the record.’” 

“Generation Doom” sounds very much like an Otep album, but with a few musical twists. Fans of the band’s previous six albums will find full-throttle musical comfort food in fierce rockers like “Zero” and “God is a Gun,” which feature Shamaya’s feral screams, roiling guitars and relentless beats, and in rockers like “Feeding Frenzy” and “No Color” that are more tuneful, but just as forceful. But the band uses hip-hop rhythms and electronic-laced sonics on “Equal Rights, Equal Lefts,” a call to action for gay rights inspired by an encounter with a man who took issue with Shamaya being gay. “Lords of War,” meanwhile, has Middle-Eastern textures sprinkled through what is otherwise a raging rocker. 

Stage show

Shamaya said Otep, which also includes drummer Justin Kier (and a touring bassist), plans to play some “Generation Doom” songs in its shows this summer, including a Saturday concert at State Theatre in downtown St. Petersburg, and she likely will have a few pointed words to share about the current president, to which she refers in a press release for the tour as “Liar-and-Thief Donald Chump.” 

The group may also incorporate elements of the “Mad Max”-inspired motif used in band photos released to promote the latest album. Shamaya said the look is meant to illustrate wasteland that will be created if global warming goes unchecked.

“‘Mad Max,’ it’s one of my favorite films,” Shamaya said. “It is an action film, but there’s great subtext, at least that I was able to pull from it, that really illustrates where I think we’re headed as a global community, where water becomes the rarest commodity on the planet. That’s actually happening, that’s true. Now it’s looking like we’re heading toward a place where we can’t really find clean water.

"And that’s not just America, that’s all over the world. Brazil’s been hit really hard and they’re having water riots, actually. Then you look at what’s happening in Flint, Michigan, all of those things are building up. So for me to see that film and the way it illustrated (the future) very poignantly, I decided it was the perfect visual for ‘Generation Doom.’”