Nu-metal revivalist Amira Elfeky is leaning into the heaviness
“Alright, fuck it, let me listen.” Amira Elfeky is remembering arguably the most pivotal moment of her career – one that came long before the hauntingly heavy ‘Tonight (Demo)’ racked up millions of streams and set the tone for her sound to come. She was on a fittingly gloomy drive around her Connecticut hometown when a friend insisted she listened to a Deftones playlist. “Chino’s vocals, everything,” she gushes, “It just sparked this thing inside of me.”
Now, Elfeky’s brooding take on nu-metal is routinely compared to Deftones. She’s just released her second EP, ‘Surrender’, collaborated with Architects on their album released in February, and is soon to tour with Bring Me The Horizon. And, she adds, “I get to sit in a room with someone like Zakk Cervini [Spiritbox, Poppy], and I’m allowed to be authentically myself and just put out the music exactly how I want it to be.”
Elfeky’s music is buoyed by fiercely personal lyrics; after a brief attempt at being in a band at 18, she realised she had such a specific vision of what she wanted to make, she couldn’t share it with other people. She released her debut EP ‘Skin To Skin’ in 2024, honing a sound best interpreted as the shadow side of pop’s current Y2k renaissance – a call back to the heaviest offerings of the 2000s, exchanging mall goth stylings for more baroque gothic visuals. “I love romantic, Victorian things,” she agrees. “And then I love Twilight and just like, fucking dark, dismal shit. So I feel like it’s very much a culmination of [the] gothic, Victorian vampiric vibe.”
The singer has also given her fanbase a rarely heard voice. Elfeky has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and writes unflinchingly about her emotions, which hit with such volatility she compares them to an exposed nerve ending (“I write for the BPD girlies,” she’s assured listeners in TikTok comments). A fan has since come to Elfeky after a show with the lyrics of ‘Coming Down’ tattooed on her calf, while others have found solace in her agonising recent single ‘Will You Love Me When I’m Dead’.
“I feel like we’ve built such a small community of just really passionate people, and I wouldn’t want any other way,” she says. “It’s a beautiful start of the journey, to have such a close-knit fan base.”
Your confessional lyrics have clearly struck a chord with listeners. What is your process going into writing?
“Sometimes I’ll have a session, and they’ll go like, ‘What do you want to write about?’’ and I’ll go: ‘No clue.’ I’ll start with a melody, and then from there I’ll hear a phrase, or I have a notes section where I have lines that I’ll think of during my everyday life. And I feel like it subconsciously all comes out. I feel a lot of intense feelings, which are very much prevalent in my lyrics. So I feel like what I’m writing is truly who I am, and not like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna write about this today.’
“I’d say a lot of the shit is very romantic or very heartbreaking – which is funny, because I’m in a very healthy relationship. Sometimes I see comments of people being like: ‘Who the fuck is hurting her?’ And I’m like, oh shit, it’s just [my] subconscious!” [Laughs]
You’ve taken to joking about your sound being ‘girl metal’ off the back of a hate comment. How have you found navigating being a woman in alternative music?
“You’re obviously met with some adversity. I remember I had another account where I would post these anime slideshows when I was starting off with my song ‘Tonight’. I was posting it on there, and that’s where the video went viral. Someone commented, ‘This doesn’t even sound like metal, this is a disgrace. This is girly metal. Like, what the hell is this?’
“I posted on my main account. I was like: ‘POV: you make girl metal’ as a joke. The connotation of that was essentially a humorous double down; like alright, fuck it. Let’s just run with it. There’s definitely a lot of people who are like, ‘this isn’t metal’. And I’m like, it can be whatever you want it to be. I don’t need to be classified into something.”
That in mind, it must feel great to have a co-sign from some of the biggest names in metal.
“I’m going on tour with Bring Me [The Horizon], and I made a song [‘Judgment Day’] with Architects, and what an incredibly positive experience. The support that I’ve received from Sam [Carter], Jordan Fish and even like Oli Sykes, the support and the recognition is just really meaningful. And those are obviously huge forces in the scene. I would say, by peers I’ve been faced with nothing but support, which is really, really meaningful.
“You see [hate] under a lot of other female artists, and it’s gonna happen, but you just gotta tune it out. I think of having those incredible interactions with Sam and all these amazing musicians who are singing [my] praises. It’s an honour, and that’s what I try to focus on.”
“There’s definitely a lot of people who are like, ‘this isn’t metal’. I’m like, it can be whatever you want it to be – I don’t need to be classified into something”
The tour news, Architects song and your own, ‘Death of Me’, came out in very quick succession, how did that feel?
“Doing the song [with Architects] and then getting the tour, and then dropping my song, it was all spread out last year, but then the announcements were one after the other, so it was just like a volcano. Nothing was planned, it just organically ended up happening like that, which is crazy.
“My London show ended up selling out, and then within a few hours we upgraded and sold out again. So this is the biggest show I’ve ever played in London and then we’ve got Download. So this year just feels very big. I’ve never been to any of these festivals I’m playing, so I don’t really know what to expect.”
Are there any songs from the EP that you’re particularly excited to try out on stage?
“There’s two songs. There’s this one called ‘Cross The Line’; I’m shooting myself in the foot with it, because it’s fucking hard to sing, belting the entire chorus. Sometimes, Zakk has a TV in his studio, and he’ll put different things on in the background for the vibe. So it was a very Twilight kind of background – a green forest, I remember we were writing it, and that one just felt very different. It’s not really rock at all. It’s very much 2000s-y, alternative, Flyleaf, Paramore-feeling.
“Then we have another song called ‘Forever Overdose’, and that one has a fucking crazy breakdown. I played that one at a festival here in America, and had a really good reaction from it, but that one I’m screaming in – I actually just learned how to scream, which is funny. I think I’m finding myself as an artist, and it’s developing slowly over the months.”
Do you feel like a lot has changed from your debut ‘Skin to Skin’ to the new EP?
“I would say it’s a better interpretation of who I am as an artist. I’m still figuring out exactly what I like and what I don’t, and I feel like this is another step into the direction of what I love. The songs are heavier, they’re a little less droney. A lot of my songs on the last EP were very elongated and yearning. Lots of breakdowns, lots of heaviness. I explore some different types of dynamics [other] than love and relationships. I’m excited for this one, because these songs are really fucking fun to play with live.”
Amira Elfeky’s ‘Surrender’ EP is out now via Anemoia Records/Atlantic Records. She tours the UK and EU in June, including stops at Download and more festivals, before the US in September – more info here
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Poppy Burton
NME
