When your music goes to the darkest of places, people respond. And Cassyette isn’t afraid of the shadows.
Over the last four years, the Brighton-based musician has dealt with life-changing problems. Her father died unexpectedly in 2020, triggering a period of substance and alcohol abuse that amplified her struggles with bipolar disorder, while her career was suddenly taking off.
She wrote her debut album in the midst of chaos, pouring all of those experiences into 15 gritty, eviscerating songs that swerve between rock, emo, pop, screamo and nu metal.
“It all just spewed out,” she says. “There are songs I made when I was in a high episode of mania, and there's songs where I was in real lows.
“Sarkness is woven throughout the album because that’s where I was at the time, but there are different shades of darkness within it.”
That means the album can switch from the bubblegum melodies of Sugar Rush (about the thrill of chasing highs in the throes of addiction) to the pulverising chords of Porcelain, where the 29-year-old confronts the fragility of life.
With a unvarnished honesty, she titled the record This World [Expletive] Sucks.
“It was necessary, I was angry,” she says.
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The musician was born Cassy Brooking in Essex the mid-1990s. In her youth, she was a convent-educated clarinet student. Then she discovered bands like Paramore, Korn, and Black Sabbath.
The sense of release was intoxicating. As a queer teenager in a strict religious environment, she often felt like a misfit or a reject. But bands like Motley Crue, with their OTT theatrics, hinted at a world where she could fit in.
By chance, her neighbour was a producer with an “insane guitar collection”. He needed a female vocalist for a “dark musical” he’d written, and it was there that Cassyette found her voice - ragged but powerful, always one step away from disintegrating with emotion.
After studying songwriting at university, she had a stint as a club DJ, playing at legendary fetish club Torture Garden and London drag event Sink The Pink.
Before long, those electronic textures seeped into her music, with bass drops and drum loops adding raw energy to her sawtooth guitar riffs.
And like every other musician under the sun, she blew up on TikTok during the pandemic, thanks partly to her ability to produce gale-force screams, even when covering Lady Gaga.
Early singles like Dear Goth and Prison Purse caught the attention of rebel icons like Debbie Harry and Liam Howlett of the Prodigy (who sprinkled some “magic dust” on her 2022 single Boom).