News
Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross make two shortlists for 2025 Oscars
The 97th Academy Awards shortlists have been revealed, with Nine Inch Nails up for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.
Here are 10 rock and metal stars whose bedroom behavior would make most people blush.
Rock music will always be tied to outlaw sexuality. No matter how many bleeding-heart ballads they write, there is an understanding that someone who wears spiked leather for a living probably -- hopefully -- is wilder in the sack than most people. Sometimes, this takes the form of an almost Halloweenish presentation, with whips, chains, and latex being flashed around to elicit gasps from concerned parents (looking at you, W.A.S.P.).
But occasionally, you hear a musician's lyrics, read an interview with them, or watch one of their videos, and get the feeling they aren't just playing kinky. These musicians not only celebrate sexuality, but they give off a sense of believable perversity, a vibe that you might not be able to handle them in the sack. And though some rock fans will inevitably be scared away by this, white knights that they are behind the scenes, many more will be drawn in and comforted that their own baser urges aren't abnormal.
Here are 10 rock musicians who make us believe that they're more than a handful in the bedroom...
One wonders if Till Lindemann ever does anything that’s not kinky. The Rammstein vocalist spends most of his music videos slaving away or crawling on the floor at the behest of some domineering woman -- in Sonne, it’s Snow White; in Deutschland, it’s the living embodiment of Germany; in the latest video for his solo project, it’s a menstruating siren who shoves her hand in his mouth. Of course, any member of a band who would release a boxed set featuring his own penis molded into a dildo is sure to have a solid grasp on his own sexuality.
The pounding, forceful industrial metal of 3TEETH certainly comes off like the soundtrack to a really satisfying bondage session. So it’s no surprise that frontman Alex Mincolla is very into the BDSM scene. Besides a Reddit AMA where he said his favorite toy was his “trusty cat o’ nine tails”, there was the list of BDSM soundtrack songs he compiled for us, in which he said, “Let’s face it, sometimes you just need to scream, ‘Bend over!’ in German at your partner to bring out that inner totalitarian in the bedroom.” It’s hard to face it when you’re bent -- ah, never mind.
Though much of Monster Magnet’s imagery suggests they’re hard into psychedelic drugs, frontman Dave Wyndorf is avowedly sober. However, in an interview with Revolver, the singer admitted that he subbed sex instead, with interesting results. “We're playing a sports arena and I walk into some, like, medical examination room or something and there's three girls in rubber nun's habits,” he said of touring with Marilyn Manson. “They must have weighed fucking 200 pounds! And they're just doing this insanely erotic show. Openly having sex, and for just the sheer joy of showing people that. And then there's just lots of horny people getting what they want in this kind of orgiastic fever. And I'm in it, you know?”
Something that has always challenged some listeners about Halestorm -- and endeared plenty of others -- is Lzzy Hale’s fearless description of her sex life, which sounds, well, adventurous. Perhaps the most vivid and interesting example of this is Do Not Disturb off of last year’s vicious, a classic heavy metal sex ballad with lyrics like, 'I love your accent -- I wonder what it’ll sound like when you cum,' and, 'And if I were you, I’d bring your girlfriend too / Two is better than one, three is better than two.' Discussing the song with Revolver, Lzzy revealed it was based on a true story: "I was going to another country the next day, and I was never going to see this woman again, so it was just this freeing moment: Anything goes." Your typical dude who claims women can’t rock is, to be frank, not ready for this jelly.
READ THIS: Here are 12 songs you didn't know were about BDSM
These days, we associate NOFX’s music with the neon colors and grinning punks of Warped Tour, but the band have been hinting at Fat Mike’s bedroom predilections since 1989’s S&M Airlines. That said, it was the frontman’s recent interview with Kerrang! that really spelled things out for us: “For a while I was ashamed of it, but about eight years ago I started living the BDSM lifestyle. Me and my chick had a slave girl and that’s how we lived. You still gotta do things you don’t want to, but in your spare time you should do whatever you want.” GG Allin would be proud.
Whether or not Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford wears his leathers into the bedroom isn’t public knowledge, but his lyrics alone suggest that Rob’s private life isn’t for the unadventurous. While Iron Maiden were writing songs about classic literature, Priest were telling tales of coitus that were as awesome as they were filthy. On Eat Me Alive from 1983’s Defenders Of The Faith tells it like it is: 'Sounds like an animal, panting to the beat / Groan in the pleasure zone, gasping from the heat / Gut-wrenching frenzy that deranges every joint/I'm gonna force you at gunpoint.' Mother of God, even we’re scandalized.
It’s unsurprising that the lead vocalist of 'The Sexiest Rock Band In The World' would make it onto this list. The Genitorturers have always put unholy lusts first and foremost in their industrial goth metal, and no-one exemplifies this more than frontwoman Gen. Rarely seen outside of latex and leather, and always happy to writhe against someone dressed as the Devil, the singer of tracks like Lecher Bitch and Flesh Is The Law is one of metal’s most outspoken kinksters. For all we know, Gen is actually a puritan in the bedroom -- but somehow we kind of doubt it.
READ THIS: 11 times rock went X-rated
There’s kinky, and there’s kinky, and then there’s Paul Ledney, frontman of extreme metal act Profanatica. Paul’s so perverse that he wrote a list of his favorite fetishes for us earlier this year. Included in it are mysophilia, being attracted to someone dirty and decayed (“Could also included a dirty shirt, towel, or panties. We prefer all three”); auto-haemofetishism, the desire to be covered in blood (“…normally accompanied by a face of true horror”); and agalmatophilia, sexual arousal over dolls or mannequins (“…for some strange reason this came into play in 1992 during two sessions”). Paul is a reminder to all rock and metal fans that the flogger in their underwear drawer is only the tip of the iceberg -- and that sometimes, just the tip is fine.
Oh man, who didn’t see that coming? Ozzy’s tendency to wear dresses and tuck his penis Silence Of The Lambs-style have suggested that he’s pretty sexually open. But a recent quote from Sharon took it to an interesting new place, suggesting that The Prince Of Darkness gets off on… the service industry? “He would dress up in evening wear,” she said. “He would be like a waiter, and he’d have like a beautiful white tie on, with no trousers, holding a tray! And he’d say, ‘Can I help you, madam?’ And I’m, like, ‘Yeees!’” God help you if he offers to read ‘the specials’.
Given the stylistic direction of most Nine Inch Nails videos, few people would be surprised to discover that frontman Trent Reznor has some kinky tendencies. The lyrics of Closer alone suggest that the industrial star enjoys sex when it’s colored by darkness and power dynamics. A more graphic description was one given by a site called Groupiedirt that collected backstage stories about rock stars in bed, in which it was said that Trent likes to role-play, has an extensive collection of toys, and enjoys playing the submissive every so often. Not exactly cock-and-ball torture, but still enough to earn him a spot on this list.
READ THIS: How different rock genres deal with sex and sexuality