“I write very emotional music, and most of the time it’s pretty angry,” says the reigning queen of shred metal, Nita Strauss. Right now, however, she’s the picture of morning contentment. Speaking with Guitar Player via Zoom, the guitarist is happily seated in the back of her tour bus, having wrapped the first date of her Summer Storm solo tour the night before in Nashville. On her lap are her two dogs: Bentley, a Pomeranian Chihuahua mix, and Motley, a Chihuahua mix. Strauss pats their heads and strokes their fur.
“The back lounge of the bus is their little kingdom,” she says. “They have everything they need, and they love it when people come by to visit them. They’re true little road dogs. I take them out on all of my solo tours. When I’m playing with other people, I have to leave them home, but when I do my shows, I get to set the rules.”
It’s breakfast time, so Strauss pours some food in a couple of bowls and sets her canine pals down to eat. She smiles as she watches them, then turns her attention back to the subject of music. “Playing the guitar and writing music is therapy for me,” she says. “I’m typically a pretty happy person. I’m not angry, although I have stress like anybody else. I don’t get into fights at the drive-thru. It’s interesting, though: When I pick up the guitar, I let it all out and go wherever my creative journey takes me. It usually takes me to some aggressive places.”
That’s certainly true throughout much of her second solo album, The Call of the Void (Sumerian Records), a relentless — and relentlessly thrilling — collection of scorching metal that showcases Strauss’s lethal virtuosic abilities as both a guitarist and songwriter. Whereas her first record, 2018’s , was an all-instrumental affair that proved she could whip up an old-school neo-classical storm, the new album is a more future-forward set aimed at mainstream rock and metal audiences. More than half of the record features vocals from a variety of aggro guests — among them, Disturbed’s David Draiman, Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale, Dorothy Martin (from the band Dorothy) and In Flames’ Anders Fridén. Even Strauss’s longtime employer, shock-rocker Alice Cooper, turns up and delivers the goods on the righteous arena-rock anthem “Winner Takes All.”
