ANGER BUT MAKE IT SLAY: Solidarity, Scene and Politics w/ Spiruline from Paris
We talked with Spiruline about the Paris scene to different cities, and about the struggle for visibility and creating safe spaces within the DIY, riot grrrl energy, and hardcore scenes.
Our paths crossed in Paris in October. Thanks to Les Murènes—a collective that some of the band members are part of—and another amazing collective, Mala Fama, the Paris launch gig of "Antipode" took place, and it truly turned into something incredible. During the same period, I had the chance to stay in Paris for a few more days and see Spiruline on stage in a completely different venue and context. Their stage presence, power, and that amazing, finger-snap-filled energy.. It was an insanely good gig! This interview happened exactly as a continuation of the excitement from that experience.
Helloo! Thank you so much taking the time for this interview. To get us started, can you tell me a bit about how did Spiruline come together? As a cliché question: why “Spiruline”? :) How would you describe the energy that brought you together in a city as intense as Paris? Is there any symbolic or political meaning behind the name?
Freda and Ida got to know each other through attending gigs and getting to organise DIY showsin Paris in 2022. At one of the gigs the idea to start a band was thrown (especially as it was again a bill with close to no women on stage), and it happened just like that ! We played our first show in April 2023. The lineup has changed throughout the years, the original guitarist quickly left as he wasn’t too motivated by the project, he was very quickly replaced by Titouan who we knew beforehand from other bands, who was dying to participate in a more hardcore/metalcore project, and Marec the drummer joined us more recently after we split up with the original drummer. Wemet through a common friend who recommended him to us, though we knew of his other bands too. As we wanted the band to be with as many women as possible, both were hired as temporary at first because we couldn’t find anyone, but we ended clicking so well and were so aligned politically and musically that it was only natural to continue that way hahaha
The Paris scene is in fact pretty active and alive, with bands forming all the time, loads of people getting involved - loads of beef and drama too, but it does bring good people together, there’s an energy of people wanting to build things they’re passionate about together.
The name Spiruline took some time to choose haha. It doesn’t really have a political meaning initself, we chose this because we liked the sea aesthetic, it’s fun, easy to remember and translates well in other languages, and it’s a wink towards being vegan/vegetarian as Spirulina is a micro-algae often consumed as a nutritional supplement for iron and vitamins. So it’s like an energetic name too.
No lie, spirulina is one of our favorite supplements hahaha.
In your music, I can hear hardcore, metalcore, and riot grrrl influences all at once (for mepersonally :) ) Where do you individually carry these different roots from? Which albums, scenes, or music movements outside Paris have shaped you the most?
Well you’re right, these are definitely our influences ! :) We all come from pretty diverse anddifferent backgrounds when it comes to music influences and practices, guess we all brought alittle bit of everything into it !
Ida: When I was maybe 12-13 I used to listen to a lot of punk like Sex Pistols, the Libertines, some old school french bands like Starshooter too. My dad got me into punk, and I grew curiousbecause a few punks with a shiny street punk style lived near my place, with spiky jackets, crazy colourful Mohawks etc. After listening to a bit of Rage Against the Machines and some metal bands, I really got into metalcore, mostly the more modern and « mainstream » bands though, like BMTH, Architects, Parkway Drive. I really got into the punk and hardcore scene after Covid, as I barely got to start dipping a foot in it right before the crisis hit sadly. But having a dad that I would qualify as a mod and a mom who loves music too, I grew up with a lot of soul, 60s and 70s rock, punk, and some European classical music as I did play a few instruments and did singing before picking up the bass just a couple of month prior to starting Spiruline. To this day I guess it’s still the influences I have. I’m glad I found the hardcore scene as it’s a good mix of what I love musically and how music and arts should be used as vessels for change, even though of course it’s far from perfect.
Titouan: I discovered Metal through some 2000s' bands when I was about ten, in the school bus, from my neighbours' old MP3 player and it completely blew my mind (SOAD, Nightwish,Metallica, Megadeth, Dark Tranquillity...). The blend between James Hetfield's rhythmic play, and Kirk Hammett's lead guitar play completely obsessed me at the time, and all the riffing fromGoteborg's Melodic Death Metal scene (DT, At the Gates, In Flames...) + black metal's imagery(Immortal...) - and I picked up Guitar ! On the more "modern" side, I also discovered in thoseyears Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory, Muse's Absolution and Nirvana's discography. Everything puttogether : high gain heavy dropped tuned guitars + screams on from Linkin Park, melodic playfrom Bellamy + giving no fuck energy from Nirvana ; brought me to all the "core" universe, andfrom my teen years, I really became completely obsessed with Metalcore, Deathcore, and a bit of Hardcore - to which I really went to later on, in more recent years. Scene wise, i was living in Asia at the time, so a few American and Australian bands were touring by, in Bangkok and Singapore, and the first gigs' I attended were there ! The first HC gigs I went to, I was about 15, and were This is Hell' and 50 Lions' (the band with Winston's from Parkway Drive brother), and local bands such as ex-A Town in Fear (renamed as Tariot). I discovered the live energy and the heavy and groovy riffing, completely loved it as well. Then moved to France for my studies, joined a modern HC band as a vocalist (Raise The Mercury), and later on a punk band in the activist Paris punk scene, which led me to meet Ida and Freda, and there goes my adventure in Spiruline. All those teenage and more recent years' influences now blend in my guitar play and mixes with the girls in what we write.
Freda: Growing up in the distant suburbs of Paris, I didn't have people around me listening to"alternative" or rock music. I've discovered it myself through Youtube with bands like Nirvana,Red Hot Chili Peppers or System of a Down in high school, reading all the Wikipedia pagesrelated to them to discover new bands. I've started to meet metalhead friends during my first year of college. They introduced me to bands I still really love like Gojira, Death or Sepultura, and lead me into these "violent music" scenes. I went to my first metal festival during this year, seeing live legendary bands like Slayer and discovering hardcore through Code Orange. During that time, I also started going to a lot to raves and free parties, discovering electronic music, especially hardcore techno with the Parisian label Casual Gabberz who promoted artists that mixes french rap music and gabber. That's also when I started to go to protests and to participate to feminist and antifascist activism (student life hahaha) where I discovered the DIY punk and hardcore scene. I immediately wanted to discover more about it, and to participate. I was kind of sick of the apolitical metal scene where far right musicians and abusers were not condemned. Punk and hardcore mixing the political engagement that was taking more and more importance in my life, the intensity of metal, and the DIY mentality you can find in free parties, was love at first sight.Bands like G.L.O.S.S, Litige (punk band from Lyon, France), or Mortality Rate were my firstfavorites. Spiruline is my first band.
Marec: I grew up listening to lots of music with my dad's CDs, mostly in the rock area, but someof them where really important to me like Nirvana's Nevermind and White Stripe's Elephant. Ispent so much time listening to them then, they are literally my first childhood memories, and had sharpened my taste for many years to come : pure energy, thick sound, oversaturated guitars, and quite particular way of singing. As i grew up i never had the chance to share this with any of my friends who were into ""boring electronic music"" (12yo me talking here) but as a kid you got to make boundaries so i became a casual David Guetta/LMFAO enjoyer for a few years. Then i discovered Skrillex which was a shock for me, with brutal sound and weird rhythms, and some featuring with KoRn pushed me into metal music that made me reconnect with my musical roots : weird ambiances and heavy guitars, tho i never referred myself as a « metalhead". The first band i joined in my early 20' was a punk/garage mix and was a life changing experience : I threw myself in the Paris punk scene, went to 2 or 3 shows per week during almost 2 years without stopping, met so much welcoming people which i consider family now. It was like my safe place for me at the time, where i could drop the fakeness i used to carry and discovered i could be part of something by just being me. Coming from a "rich and elitist environment" (which i never blended in) where we didn't talk politics, i discovered lots about poverty, racism, queer people, systemic oppressions, and everyday life struggles i neverexperienced, wich made me politically enraged.I began to play in lots of bands, especially punk and decided to build my life around music, which made me go to places i would never been without.This is how we met with Spiruline, i was only here for 3 gigs at the time but it was musically and politically a strong match, so, here we are now.
How did the political and aesthetic line of the band take shape? There is anger on stage, but also a sense of social analysis and solidarity behind. How do you collectively define this direction?
The band is for us a political project as much as it is a musical one. It started as being fed up with things we lived in the scene and in society in general as women, so a lot of our lyrics revolve around that experience (in a shorter, sassier way than how we would express it in everyday life maybe hahaha). It’s a major topic because sexism, misogyny and homophobia, being very pervasive and omnipresent in french culture, is our most familiar experience. We of course try to articulate our political stances and ideas in those lyrics too, as most of these topics are intertwined anyways. And more importantly, we try our best to walk the walk too by partaking in benefit shows, sometimes organising them ourselves, connecting with other bands and scenes, producing our merch the most ethical way we can, participating in solidarity projects, etc. It’s not what’s gonna change the world but it’s the least we can do and it wouldn’t make sense for us to have these lyrics and not act by what we try and preach. We use the very small visibility that we have to bring up all the subjects that matter to us, and that are not talked about enough, and do our part to change it as much as we can.
This is something we really feel in the visual aesthetic of Spiruline as well! The logo, posters, photos.. is very sharp and distinctive. What inspires this aesthetic line? Is there a specific artist/designer who shapes your visual identity?
Thank you !! We have worked with several people through time and also did some stuff ourselves, especially in the beginning (the first logo, the artwork of the EP...). The more recent stuff was made by Ozan @wretched_visuals, as you sure may have recognised haha, and many of our photos were taken by Melisa @harshivvv who is an amazing photographer and visual artist from Paris. Either way we’re not influenced by any particular artist, but the vibe we go for is heavily riot grrrls/girl gang-ish influenced, like the Japanese sukeban gangs and pinky violence movies. We aim at something energetic and badass while not sacrificing the « girly » aesthetic because we shouldn’t be ashamed of it either, nor cater to anyone’s gaze other than our own. Anger but make it slay <3
Your themes often revolve around anger, resistance, women/queer visibility, politicalpressure, and personal crises. How does the lyric-writing process work within the band? Does it start collectively, or does it begin as an individual expression?
For the lyrics of our pre-existing songs, we mostly wrote individually on a whim without reallythinking too much, when we had bursts of anger or any other strong emotion, as an outlet. Also a lot of whimsy and provocation haha. Ida and Freda had lyrics they wrote during a certain time,and wanted to use them for songs. Then we would rework them collectively for them to becoherent and somewhat rhyme and work with the music. Sometimes, someone has lyrics in mind with rhythm or melodic ideas, and we try to make a song out of it. It was the case for Mosquito, during the writing of the lyrics, Titouan was imagining the guitar riff to be as repetitive and almost annoying as the "zzzzzz" of a mosquito. Same with the beginning of Punk b4 School. Nowadays we’re trying to write them more in accordance to the music we’re writing to make them fit more together and not just make them work, though we think about the topics together, maybe add a word or punchline here and there.
As insiders, how would you describe the hardcore scene in Paris? How do the suburbs, immigrant communities, political atmosphere, and youth culture shape the scene?
Does the Paris scene make you happy, or do you have criticisms as well?
The hardcore scene in Paris is... something haha. It hasn’t been very welcoming to us to be fair,it’s mostly the punk scene that has really welcomed us and booked us on gigs here (because for some reason people really seem to insist on keeping these two scenes divided, which makes no sense for us). As we mentioned French culture despite pretending to be so civilised and the land of human’s rights has a very strong, vicious form of misogyny and LGBTQphobia, that might not be as openly visible as its racism which is really strong. and unfortunately these scenes are no exception. Also we feel like in the north of France (which includes paris), there’s a very strong influence of negative hardcore and beatdown that kind of set a context of depoliticization and cliquey boys club. So it can be really hard for bands like ours to get support from promoters with our aesthetic and message. Even coming from the more leftist sides of the scene we’ve had trouble. They generally blame our music quality but you can tell when this is genuine or not. We’ve mostly resorted to promote our own Paris shows if we wanted to be on full hc bills, though to be fair it’s really gotten better and we’ve had a lot of support from the public and scenes elsewhere, which is still quite unbelievable and touching for us.
Otherwise, Paris is often perceived as a rich bourgeois city - which is ofc true - but it also has a rich working class history that is sometimes overlooked, in its suburbs too, and that has shaped entire areas to be the home of many subcultures, which includes punk and hc of course. Sadly, gentrification and the rise of conservative (if not downright fascist) measures are making it more and more complicated for these scenes to exist, as many venues and squats get closed down, even the historic ones, like la Miroiterie year’s back, which a historic squat that held legendary gigs in the Ménilmontant area. Luckily the scene is somehow thriving after Covid with gigs almost everyday in Paris and suburban cities close to it like Montreuil for instance.
Which venues feel most like “home” for Spiruline? Do you think venue politics influence your music? Are the places where we can see you limited and specific, or could we see you one day in a squat and another day in a large venue? What are your criteria for choosing where to play?
This band has taken us to pretty crazy and unbelievable places hahaha. For us, playing in squats might be when we feel the most at home, can’t really say if one of them really sticks out, but it’s really where we create our best memories and meet the most awesome people. Venue politics don’t influence our music really but it does when it comes to choosing a venue to organise in or play in. We avoid as much as possible venues that don’t respect bands, that are too expensive to book, that are tied to reactionary organisations, or that have a history of sexual violence especially if it was perpetrated or permitted by their team, or that have expressed opinions we can’t condone at all. Not saying we did a perfect run as we’re not always aware and all, but we try our best. Otherwise, we’re just as happy to play in squats as in « big » professional venues, or social centres, we’re happy with pretty much any venue conditions and do the most of it haha. We feel like it’s important to be present in various contexts and to different audiences, as long as they don’t contradict our project. It’s said that visibility for queer, women, and non-binary musicians in Paris has been increasing.
I first met you at a squat, and one day later I saw you on a stage in a much bigger venue. Both were amazing because the Spiruline energy leaves its mark wherever it is, whether it's the organization (Les Murènes<3) or the gig, and that was incredible!
So how do you think this rise has transformed the energy and aesthetics of the scene? How effective do you feel safety-space practices have been?
When it comes to hardcore, it’s a slow process. That we know of, there’s less than 10 hardcorebands with women (two of them including the same woman lol) in France. For punk it’s different,we feel like there's less focus on codes, sounding a specific way, being super technical, maybe women & queers feel more comfortable exploring that genre in bands than in hardcore bands, but it’s only a supposition. Maybe the existence of riot grrrls and such in the history of the movement makes it easier to relate to. We also have to give credit to Salut les Zikettes, a collective organising workshops for women and queer people wanting to start a band but have very little or no music experience, and this has helped launching tons of bands of all ages, which is really cool considering how long we can sometimes censor ourselves or be censored. They even managed to release a cool compilation with only bands that originated from these workshops ! There may also be more efforts on giving visibility to pre existing bands with women and queer people with collectives like les Murenes and such. Not sure if all the efforts by venues when it comes to safety are enough though. Sexual violence and racism is often overlooked and not taken seriously enough by venues and promoters, especially if it’s one of their friends who did it lol. There are still some efforts done but we don’t really consider like it’s gotten really that safe. Of course being 100% safe is impossible to achieve anyways, but we’re still very far from that.
Paris’s scene frequently interacts with cities like London, Berlin, Brussels,..In your opinion, what distinguishes the Paris hardcore scene from these other scenes?
In our case, we haven’t been to Brussels, Berlin or London (yet - UK tour in May !), but we’ve been invited to play in Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, and soon Italy. What comes to our mind first is really that so far, and from our experience, other major cities' HC scenes are much more welcoming of "outside the narrow minded codes projects" like ours haha. In Paris specifically, HC organizations never invite us to play, and don't really consider us being part of the scene, even though they do hear abouts us, and see that we're growing as a band and reaching new places. We feel that we're happy with the people we connect with throughout Europe, and don't really bug ourselves so much with Paris' inner HC circles boys clubs...!Paris is also saturated with bands and promoters, so sometimes there’s too much focus on artistic direction and having a « coherent » lineup, which leaves less room for new bands or bands in between genres. Maybe in « smaller » scenes people care less about it as they don’t have the luxury of choosing from so many bands.
What is the audience like outside Paris? Have there been cities where you felt more “at home” than expected?
We have actually ! The Swiss and German scenes have been super welcoming to us, for example.
One show we did in Köln was one of our most amazing gig experiences. We never had a truly bad experience anywhere we played, but it's true that we felt much more easily welcomed inGermany's and Switzerland's HC scenes that in France's. We were quickly invited to play in pure HC gigs and Fest in those two countries, when in France it took more time, even though in the last months, and especially in the upcoming ones, things are changing for the best for us. The scene from the Southern side of France (Bordeaux, Toulouse ...) is also very nice. We played an awesome gig last summer in Hossegor (south atlantic coast) and people seemed to love what we do. I think people in the South of France are not scared to show that they have fun during gigs, they're not taking themselves as seriously as the Parisian people who want to belongs so bad to the right clique. So far, we felt welcomed in European countries we went to, and can't wait for the new countries we're reaching this year (Italy, the UK, and maybe more...?)
On stage, there is a strong feeling of collective struggle and solidarity. Safety, visibility, mutual respect... What measures do you take to ensure these spaces? And specifically within hardcore scene, mosh-pit culture and more. What does creating a safe space mean to you?
Between each other, those values are completely natural to each of us, even though we're notperfect ofc, we always remain super careful to keep Spiruline the safest of places for its members, and the persons the band interacts with. During gigs, or friends' gigs etc., with the audience, other bands, organizations etc., we just stick to being ourselves as well, keep our values strong, and insure that a safe space is guaranteed to each and everyone. We don't hesitate to talk through things whenever an incident rises, even if it means pausing during a set of course, or cancelling gigs etc. It's also a long term job of staying informed of what is happening in the scene, to address matters as they rise, and not let toxic behaviors or negative domination/balance of power develop itself in those spaces.
Do you have future plans? New recordings, tours, upcoming projects?
Yes !!! We’re working on a new EP that should be released around March/April 2026. We havedope tours and festival we’ll be attending up until May, including a UK tour with our friends from Passed Out. And we’re continuing to organise and find new ideas hehe.
Super cool, so excited! Thank you so much for this interview! Is there anything else you’d like to add? :)
Thank you so so much for asking us all of these questions, we really love your work and we're very honored to be part of this zine. We'd love to do more things together, and come play in Istanbul !! Lot of love from Paris <3
