Photo by Jaime Shaheen
Genitorturers
Before she embarked on a 33-year (and counting) career as the frontwoman of the provocative industrial-punk band Genitorturers, Gen Vincent was a pre-med student at a well-to-do liberal arts college in a small Florida town about 20 miles north of Walt Disney World.
And if you know anything about Vincent or her band, it probably goes without saying that she didn’t exactly fit in.
“(In 1986), Rollins [College] was a real hoity-toity school. Kids were driving Lamborghinis and stuff like that. Everyone was wearing pink Izod shirts and boat shoes and plaid shorts, and I showed up with this huge, bright blue mohawk,” Vincent says with a loud laugh. “After I was there for a while, one of my professors said, ‘You know there’s another one of you here.’”
The other punk at Rollins was a woman named Marisa Demeio. She and Vincent became best friends throughout college and eventually started a band. At first, the band was just to counteract the stress and seriousness of their studies.
“I was taking organic chemistry, biology, physics (and) spending a lot of time in lab, so I had a lot of time to think, ‘What am I going to do to get my ya-yas out?’” Vincent says. “I think I was just cooped up and smelling too much benzene in the lab or something. So I figured, ‘You know what would be really funny? I’m going to start a band based around genital torture.’”
With Vincent on bass and Demeio singing, Genitorturers was born. They found the name during one of the duo’s excursions to a local gay club. (“We weren’t gay,” Vincent says, “but we felt accepted there.”) Their sound was rooted in Vincent’s long-standing interest in early punk rock like Black Flag and The Germs. And their live show quickly took on some of the aesthetic aspects of the punk scene—live body piercing and lots of leather, for example—before blossoming into one of the most unique rock ‘n’ roll spectacles on the road.
From the jump, Genitorturers were a DIY juggernaut. They practiced in the basement of a campus chapel, thanks to a cool professor who gave them the key. They started a student takeover of the college’s radio station so they could play their music. They published a zine so they could promote their band to the outside world. And they ramped up their show to incorporate fetishism, bondage, S&M and other sexual themes that appealed to the open-minded folks in the punk and LGBTQ communities.
“Back then, you were already so out-of-the-box based on how you looked and the music you listened to, so everything was just more accepted in that scene when it came to sexuality as well,” Vincent says. “We were bringing that whole lifestyle to the stage, which at the time was really, really radical.”
In 1993, the band’s work ethic paid off when Miles Copeland—music industry lifer and manager of The Police—discovered Genitorturers and signed them to his label, I.R.S. Records, where they joined huge bands like R.E.M. and The Go Go’s. That year, the band released its debut album, 120 Days of Genitorture, a set of scuzzy, salacious songs that sit somewhere near the intersection of punk, the rumbling alt-rock of the day and a circus sideshow.
“Take my body for your own play,” Vincent snarls in “Jackin’ Man” over a groove that sounds like Primus meets Van Halen. “Torch my soul/Fill it how you wish/To see you bleed is what I need.”
Genitorturers have only recorded a couple full-length albums since. Then again, the studio is not necessarily where Vincent and her band mates excel. Instead, they’re road warriors who’ve created not only a must-see live experience, but also a community of loyal fans who may not otherwise have a place where they can go and feel comfortable being themselves.
Vincent tells the story of a longtime transgender fan who started coming to Genitorturers concerts as a man and eventually transitioned into a woman. Now, she’s an elected official in a Southern state, Vincent says.
Genitorturers play Feb. 23 at Brick By Brick
“Early on, she confided in me. ‘This is how I feel,’” she says. “The next tour, she wore a little makeup. Next tour, she wore girlier clothes. I watched this over time and it’s really interesting because that’s someone who said, ‘Well, you’re the only person I could say this to.’”
Just as Vincent found acceptance along her journey—from Demeio, from the professor who snuck her a key, from the gay club where she got her band’s name—she hopes Genitorturers has served the same purpose for others who exist outside society’s mainstream.
“I think I’ve always felt that I had something to share with people who already had those interests to help them along, to become more comfortable with themselves and with expressing themselves,” she says. “We’re very blessed that we have a live show that people not only want to come see, but they want to come be a part of our big weird family.”
That big weird family’s favorite band will roll into San Diego as part of the “Pretty in Kink” tour, with headliners Lords of Acid and fellow opening act Orgy.
“We’re sharing a tour bus with Orgy, which will be interesting,” Vincent says, chuckling. “You try to explain that to people that ‘we’re on the Orgy Genitorturers bus’, and you get some funny looks.”