Get to Know the Sirens
Emerging from the rapids of WNC, The Smoky Mountain Sirens are here and ready to pull you under with their in-your-face lyrics and unapologetic intensity.
The punk/ alt-rock trio consists of of Eliza Hill, Aimee Jacob Oliver and Rose Vermillion.
Founded in 2019, The Smoky Mountain Sirens set out to write music inspired by conversations about ethically unfavorable and challenging situations that they—and and many others—face as women in the music industry and in life.
Their dynamic harmonies, paired with cut-throat lyrics and powerful melodies make them a force to behold.
Their debut album, “Solid 8,” releasing August 26th, 2022 is a brazen commentary on the appalling behavior, unwanted advances and unsolicited advice that many are encouraged to “just brush off.” With it they hope to encourage people to "Woman Up" and stand firm for what they believe in and for theirselves.
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Want to learn more about The Smoky Mountain Sirens, their music and their tour dates?
Siren Interview in Mountain Xpress Magazine
September 25th, 2022
Power TrioBy Edwin Arnaudin
Like many bands, The Smoky Mountain Sirens got their start by performing cover songs. But it didn’t take long for the trio to realize familiar crowd-pleasers would never sustain their creative itch.
“We ended up deciding that just was not the right path for us, so we started writing,” says Rose Vermillion, the group’s bassist and co-vocalist.
Aimee Jacob Oliver, the band’s guitarist and fellow vocalist, got things started with a number of songs inspired by conversations she and her fellow bandmates had about sexist remarks and behaviors they’d been subjected to as women in a male-dominant music industry.
Vermillion then began working on her own lyrics, with drummer Eliza Hill offering occasional lines. Considering the rage all three were feeling, it made sense to channel their emotions through punk rock.
“Aimee comes from a very heavy punk background, and I come from more of a crowd-pleasing background,” Vermillion says. “So anytime I’d write a song, I’d give it to her before introducing it as a collective, and she’d punk it up. And then she’d send me a song she wrote — which is heavy, heavy stuff — and I’d put in hooks and melodies and harmonies. And all of our songs end up meeting in the middle.”
Local engineer Matt Langston soon took notice and invited the Sirens to his Rock Candy Recordings studio for a free session to see how they all worked together. The band agreed, tracked “Solid 8” and listened back.
“After we heard how that one turned out, we were like, ‘You need to take all our money. Let’s keep this ball rolling,’” Vermillion says.
The resulting 10-track album, also dubbed Solid 8, captures the band’s energy in a polished and produced manner that Hill feels nicely complements the Sirens’ raw, raging live shows. But even with the blunt, honest subject matter of their songs, much of it aimed at toxic masculinity, the drummer emphasizes that the group’s aims don’t involve declaring war on the other sex — a misinterpretation that she and Vermillion note is sadly common.
“It’s not about excluding men or pushing men to the side or putting men down. It’s about everybody working together,” Hill says. “The root of feminism is equality, and excluding men from the bigger picture just because they’re men and not because of what they can add to the situation isn’t necessarily feminism. That’s just being exclusionary and it’s not constructive.”
To learn more, visit avl.mx/bz8.
Album Release Party Review!
Aug 30th 2022
Concert Review: Smoky Mountain Sirens at Fleetwood’sBy Brian Postelle
There’s something great about a short rock show. One uninterrupted set of fantastic songs. No nonsense, no fluff. Get in, get out, and leave behind an exhilarated crowd.
That’s precisely what the Smoky Mountain Sirens delivered at their Aug. 26 album release show at Fleetwood’s with their own brand of loud, fun, catchy punk rock.
Since its origins in 2019, the trio — Aimee Jacob Oliver (guitar), Rose Vermillion (bass) and Eliza Hill (drums) — has made Fleetwood’s a kind of home base, returning time and again even while popping up at other Asheville venues like Static Age Records, The Sly Grog Lounge, and The Odd. So it tracks that the group would choose the Haywood Road venue to ring in its debut album, Solid 8.
The band has been diligently building hype for the release in recent months, dropping singles and videos online, and dropping in on podcasts and radio shows near and far. The legwork paid off: the sold-out show brought out not only Fleetwood’s regulars and already loyal fans, but also new blood like a Hendersonville couple who told this reviewer that they had heard the Sirens interviewed on Blue Ridge Public Radio while returning from a day of mushroom foraging.
Asheville-based space/psych rock band Guy Roswell opened up the evening with a sonic blanket of bass-driven, reverb-washed ‘60s fuzz, drawing the patio crowd inside to Fleetwood’s garage-like space. Local thrash/hardcore outfit GÄK followed, launching an assault of speed drums, metal progressions, and screaming vocals with frontman Billy Tylenöl invading the audience and dragging a few of them in for vocal support on the crowd-pleasing “No Sleep Till Woodfin.”
By the time the Sirens set up, Fleetwood’s staff had been turning away newcomers for a couple of hours. Inside, a good number of attendees were sporting white beauty pageant sashes emblazoned with “Solid 8” that they’d acquired from the merch table. The band ran through “Hear the Sirens” for sound check, then, for the next 37 minutes, tore through the album’s 10 tracks from front to back.
Solid 8 is full of rowdy but well-put-together songs that trade in equal parts bite and humor, plus some spookiness thrown in and a recurring thread of female empowerment. The title track and songs like “Digital Bride” thumb a nose at far too familiar attitudes of subjugation and objectification but bundle that thumb in high-energy anthemic hooks. The crowd, packed in around the band, pumped fists and nodded heads, picking up the chorus during numbers like “Woman Up” and “K.O.”
Despite their frenetic pace of recording, shooting videos, performing, promoting, and also raising families, working, and conducting life in the real world, the Smoky Mountain Sirens came ready to play. Their performance was seemingly flawless, and they moved from song to song without pausing for banter or band conferences. Oliver and Vermillion are both vocal powerhouses, and when Hill joins in, the group sears.
The songs on Solid 8 are full of momentum. They charge out of the gate and don’t let up. They only hit apex after apex, and the band moved through each one without stumbling, nailing breakneck fast stop-starts on “K.O.” and “Insatiable.” When they wrapped up the album’s performance with “The Worst," the Sirens stopped and looked around for the first time. But the crowd kept at them until they played “War Baby,” another original not on the new album, and the show was over.
“Now,” Vermillion proclaimed, “We get to have a party.” Judging from the energy at Fleetwood’s that Friday night, the party was already well underway.
The Release of "Solid 8": Debut Album
August 26th, 2022
After months of writing Recording and so much hard work, The Smoky Mountain Sirens along with Rock Candy Recordings FINALLY RELEASE "Solid 8"
The album is filled with original music, written by the Siren girls, to shine light on all the uncomfortable scenarios and situations women (and many others) unfortunately find themselves in. Inspired by real life and the conversations that follow.
The Smoky Mountain Sirens hold absolutely nothing back with this 10 song tribute to feminism and all that it entails.
We'd like to thank Rock Candy Recordings and all who helped us make it happen. We are very grateful and proud to present to you "Solid 8"
Sirens on Holy Crap Records Podcast
August 2nd, 2022
Listen to Sirens on Episode #221 of Holy Crap Records!
Sirens on Blueridge Public Radio
August 24th, 2022
SMOKY MOUNTAIN SIRENS HAVE WRAPPED FEMALE EMPOWERMENT INTO A BIG-SOUNDING RECORD
by Matt Peiken
Rose Bales said she and her bandmates in the Smoky Mountain Sirens knew they had made a special record even before hearing the final mixes.
“I had been playing music by myself for four billion years, but it wasn’t until we made this album and wrote music together and had a collective goal that I actually thought ‘This is something I could potentially do and people will care about it,’” Bales said.
The Smoky Mountain Sirens are a trio of Asheville women with years of experiences in other bands. They started performing covers and have only written and performed their own music less than two years. Their new, debut album is unlike anything that’s emerged from this region’s music scene.
Magazines such as Pitchfork have showered attention on Asheville indie artists such as Angel Olsen, Indigo de Souza, Moses Sumney and the bands Wednesday and Secret Shame. A handful of newer bands are kindling a local hardcore scene. Now, the Smoky Mountain Sirens are stepping in with “Solid 8,” a big-sounding rock record steeped in polished grit, catchy hooks and lyrics bursting with female empowerment.
“We saw potential, for sure,” said Aimee Jacob Oliver, the band’s guitarist, who splits the lead vocals with Bales, often in the same song.
“We started knowing that there’s not really a lot of female musicians, not only in Asheville, kind of on the spotlight, but also in one band,” Oliver said. “So, that was kind of the start of it, like, ‘We’re gonna do this.’”
“Solid 8” isn’t a concept record, but band members were aware of the connecting feminist threads once they’d written a handful of songs—many stemming from shared stories and conversations. The title track was inspired by a male interviewer who gave drummer Eliza Hill an unsolicited appraisal as a “Solid 8.”
“Every time I talk about ‘Solid 8’ and the message behind it and the story behind the song, whether I’m telling it to a woman who’s 16 or 56, everybody has a story like that,” Hill said. “But the songs are about taking the power back and not coming from a place of being a victim and coming from a place of power instead."
“I think a lot of this music, this is really more about how we feel and how we want other people to feel,” Oliver said.
“Because We’re taught for so long to just keep it down, don’t even mention it, let it go, let it slide, brush it off,” Bales added. “But some things don’t need to be let go. Some things don’t need to slide.”
The Sirens are still an independent band in every literal sense. They have no manager, booking agent or record label. They’ve shot all the videos promoting the new album on Oliver’s iPhone. “Solid 8” sounds like the kind of record that could vault the band beyond the Southeast. Band members said they’re determined to fulfill that potential.
“It’s not like walking into a place anymore and being like ‘Listen to my CD. Oh, you like it? Cool, I’ll give you a million dollars.’ But it has to be kind of organic and natural and a good fit,” Oliver said. “Just going and getting anybody isn’t going to work. We want someone that’s gonna care about us as much as we care about us.”
The last chance for a while to catch the Smoky Mountain Sirens is Friday, when the band performs the entire “Solid 8” album at Fleetwood’s in West Asheville.
