Doro - The Metal Queen
The First Lady of Metal
Doro Pesche is the embodiment of the 80’s Metal Goddess. Initially the front woman for seminal German Metal band Warlock, she has fronted her own band DORO since the early 90s.
During the 1980s women in Metal were usually represented in highly sexualised ways in the subject of songs, or as background singers, or more often as not as eye candy in Hair Metal videos.
Founded in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1982 Warlock were immediately different. The beautiful blonde in the video was the vocalist and front woman. In an era where male vocalists often adopted an effiminate sexualised look (like David Lee Roth in Van Halen or Bret Michaels in Poison), Warlock were oddly different as the sexy blonde vocalist was actually a good looking woman. Not only that, but Doro can sing and is a vivacious leader on stage.
I was around ten or eleven when I first discovered hard rock. To an impressionable eleven year old Doro was the biz. She leapt off the pages of the Metal magazines, and her peers were the likes of Lemmy and Ozzy. Blonde, glamorous, and with a husky voice perfectly suited to rock and Metal, Doro was many Metalheads first crush.
In spite of her good looks and sometimes risqué stage persona, she managed to sidestep any attempt at sexploitation of her image.
Warlock released four albums during the 80s. In truth, they were four excellent metal albums full of riffs and anthems that should have seen them become as big as the likes of Motorhead and Judas Priest. In a way they did.
There are several kinds of mega-fame as a musician. There’s your Michael Jackson or Elvis fame. That’s the type where everyone in the world knows what you look like. When you’re dead, a lot of your fans don’t even believe it.
Doro is not that kind of famous. But within the genre of Heavy Metal, and specifically the kind of classic 80’s Metal that Warlock helped popularise, Doro is the Queen of the genre.
Doro was the original flag bearer for women in Metal. Yes, there were other female musicians and vocalists in the scene before and contemporary to her. But what Doro did for women in Metal, is kind of what Metallica did for metal as a genre. If you ask a non metal fan to name a classic metal band, they’ll probably say Metallica (sorry Black Sabbath fans but ‘Tallica are more famous). If you ask a metal fan to name a classic female metal vocalist, they’ll name Doro.
Join me here on a quick dive through Doro’s back catalogue.
The opening track of Warlock’s debut album sounds like a Motorhead song, but with a Valkerie on vocals. The album is an excellent debut, but outside of Doro’s native Germany it didn’t sell well at all. This was down to poor marketing rather more than any lack of interest in the Metal world.
The sophomore release Hellhound, sold better and the band sound more accomplished and even go for a big power ballad with ‘Catch My Heart’.
The third album is a shot at the big time. Infused with Judas Priest type type anthems. Doro finally appeared on MTV and she became the first woman to front a Metal act at the Monsters of Rock (alongside the likes of Motorhead and Ozzy).
In 1988, Warlock released their fourth and most successful album ‘Triumph and Agony’. It reached number 80 in the US Top 100 Billboard and spawned two massive singles in ‘Fur Immer’ and ‘All We Are’.
This was also the end of the band unfortunately. Doro was the sole remaining original member as all of her band mates had left, mainly due to the pressures of touring. Her management at the time (who presumably were all cigar smoking evil corporate types), fought her for the usage of the Warlock band name and won.
Unperturbed, the band DORO was launched in 1989 with the album ‘Force Majeure’ and a cover version of one of the most famous Soul songs of all time.
Doro has gone on to record a total of 18 studio albums (including the 4 with Warlock). It wasn’t all plain sailing. She never had the opportunity to break America in the way Judas Priest and Iron Maiden did. When the grunge inspired rejection of classic metal arrived in the early 90s, it was right at the start of her solo career. She made a tactical retreat back to Europe, where she was lauded by her native Germany and won plaudits in Spain and the Low Countries.
She’s kept the classic metal sound and has been a regular at the massive European Metal Festivals like Wacken and Rock am Ring. Below you can check out her duet with Swedish Melodic Death Metal band, Amon Amarth.
Album 19 was released this year and coincides with her 40th year in the business. It features two duets with Rob Halford from Judas Priest (and others). My current favourite tracks the lead single from the album.
The video has Doro lording it over a post-apocalyptic wasteland, her distinctive rasping vocals soar over the top of a classic twin guitar attack. ‘Children of the Dawn’, will no doubt be an anthem at the festivals next summer as thousands punch the air along to the chorus.
I haven’t been very active with this newsletter in 2023. A number of life changes have occurred, which meant writing was put on the back-burner. All is well though, and you can expect more articles for the remainder of the year and hopefully a return to regular service in ‘24.
Next post: “50,000 tears I’ve cried”