F  L  A  U  N  T

I met Actually Huizenga, the matriarch of “snuff metal” band Patriarchy, back in 2017 when she sauntered up to the studios at KXLU in Los Angeles. What followed was a series of deafening shrieks echoing through the halls of my quaint little Catholic school. “Sweet piece of meat. Come unto me now,” she sang from her debut song as Patriarchy, “Sweet Piece of Meat”. That was nearly 5 years ago, and since then, Huizenga has seen this project take many iterations, with new band members, a sensational remix album (Reverse Circumcision), a series of mid-COVID livestreams that you almost feel you shouldn’t be watching, and now, a new record.

Today, Patriarchy releases the new single, “Suffer”, following the release of “Lock Jaw” and the Kris Baha remixes. This love song—something Huizenga may have been apprehensive to write when she was working on the first Patriarchy record—“Suffer” indicates a shift in the Patriarchy project and a tonal introduction to the new record.

“Suffer” premieres today with Flaunt via Dero Arcade and will hit streaming tomorrow. We caught up with Actually to discuss “Suffer”, the new record, Werner Herzog and trying to understand people, knowing nothing about nothing, and a whole lot about the self.

“Suffer” is the first single you’re releasing from the your new album.  Tell me about it.

It’s the first time I ever wrote an album that is about my experience with “love” and dealing with the pain of it. Because I was in a relationship all of my twenties for ten years. I just thought I’d be with them forever and would focus on my art. I became almost—still sexual, but only in my art. Everything became art. Since all my sex was in the art and not so much in my personal life, which is barely separated from my art in the first place, I came out of that relationship and lost all my stuff in a fire and was finishing my album. And all that tumbled into somewhat of a relationship, and it was the best sex I ever had. But I didn’t know that this person’s definition of love was different than what I thought it was. Because I never say the word. But the person was a player, which is not exactly their fault, because we love players. But I was heartbroken, you know? The sex kept continuing, and then I’d cry, and then it was amazing, and then I was like ‘oh my god, I want him so much’. It was obsessive, you know? I was like a crazy person!

Then quarantine happened, I was like: what can I do? So I did the remix album, which was actually a way to get to this person again. Everything I was doing was linked to this obsessive lust I had towards this person I was copulating with. As it kept going, amazing things started happening around the pain. I was starting to make it almost like a magic ritual. And then I got a connection to work with this really amazing producer called Matia who’s in this band called Inhalt in the studio, and he’s like, “You’ve gotta go back and you have to make demos.” And I did. I stopped drinking. Spent a whole entire month alone, so I was able to house-sit for my mother while she was away. It was like the perfect situation, and I just wrote. I was angry, you know? ‘Cause he wouldn’t call me and I wanted him so much. So that’s what all these songs were about. “Suffer” is a later one. “Lockjaw” was definitely about the first person. And then “Suffer” was half about him and half about someone else. So it’s actually about two different situations, but it’s the same. Instead of getting angry about how I was getting hurt, which was my own projection, to be honest, I decided to use it as this ritualistic tool to really put passion into my work instead of just being ironic and trying to fuck with the social system which is what I usually would do with Patriarchy. 

Then I decided that I would study these straight men that I thought were hurting me because of how they are. I decided to start asking guys I knew were players. I have a lot of straight guy friends! They’re just as fucked up as the women. But the women have their fucked-up-ness on the outside. But the men seem to have hidden it. I’m not trying to do that red-pill/blue-pill shit. I’m just talking about humans. I just wanted to hear from them.

And when I’m making my music, I was only going into how I felt and how I was thinking the guys were treating me. So a lot of the songs are me almost switching sides sometimes. So even in “Suffer” I’m kind of singing more from the victim standpoint, but also from the succubus, sort of. “Suffer”, it’s a love song. And it’s about letting someone take control of you for a moment because it feels good, for me at least. But it’s like alcohol or any addiction, I realized. Because if you’re going to let yourself be taken over by that, it’s dangerous. So it’s just another addiction, and you either stop and become like Queen Elizabeth or a nun or some monk, or you can be an artist like me, and use it. So I’m lucky I could use it, and I was thinking how horrible it must be for people who aren’t artists. Where are they going to vent all that rage from the addiction of love if they’re so lucky to have found it in some places? 

Where do you think people channel that elsewhere? 

They get angry at other people: family, or they’re on social media spreading fake news or something! I don’t know. They’re looking at other things. For example, when you blame another woman who you think might have taken your man. First of all, it’s not their fault and maybe it should be about how you feel about the situation. How do you make it work for you? You have to accept the situation first, and then you see how it works into your life because we’re the only ones in our minds. Humans love to pack up and have friends which is great, and sometimes it feels good to take a side or to fight. To get that war mentality, or something. So I notice that sometimes, especially with my band Patriarchy. I know what some people are thinking, and I like to play with that. But they don’t realize what is really going on. But I’m not going to go into that because I like to play with that. It’s fun for me. I’ve never been the whore. I don’t know why, it must be some sort of primordial Dionysus ancient rebellion from my female self that’s been repressed. 

So that’s what I’m trying to deal with through the music and that’s why it’s great that I can become my idea of what a man is and be angry with him but also super turned on in the music. I’m singing as different characters who are me, and it’s almost like I become the thing that I fear, which is also the thing that I love. I think I’m afraid of love, or whatever that feeling is, because of the loss of control. And this is so 101 philosophy, right, but that’s why it felt so good to make this album and songs like “Suffer”. I always was against love songs because I thought they were cliché. But clichés come from archetypes and things that are real, even though they are not perhaps truthful or fair. It’s not fair to think of someone in a certain way, but you are thinking of them in that way even though it’s wrong. 

It’s that toying with expectation that’s always been at the crux of Patriarchy, or even just your solo work before.

I always quote ancient Socrates and I say ‘I know that I know nothing.’ Because I really know that I know nothing. I’m not saying I don’t know anything. I just don’t know anything for certain about anything. None of us really do. As soon as you realize that, all of a sudden you see things in almost brighter colors. It’s like when the hangover passes. I don’t know if I’m seeing things for what they really are, or if I’m seeing things more clearly as they are without knowing what they really are at all. I feel that way with men now, and women, and people, anyone! Just humans. I was telling someone the other day, I was joking, they asked my favorite animal. I said, “humans.” They said, “Oh that’s horrible.” And I was like well no, think about it, we love humans the most, duh. I’m not gonna go have sex with a sheep.

Yeah, not your M.O.

Are you born or are you conditioned to be evil? Is evil in you from the beginning or is it conditioned? It’s obviously both, but I’ve been trying to figure that out too. Women love crime shows and unsolved mysteries, serial killer documentaries. Of course everyone loves those, but it seems to be that a lot of women watch those, and I think it’s because most of the victims are women. Why are women mostly the victims? And why are most of the predators men? Is it because of the conditioned way of fearing the women—fearing the womb? Anyways. I try to study humanity as much as I can. That’s why I called the band Patriarchy. I was like: what are we living in now? My humanity. Patriarchy is something we’re never gonna get out of. We’re in it. It’s the structure. Patriarchy has war, it has sex, it has violence, it has phallic symbolism. When the Patriarchy is demolished it’s gonna become cyborg-y—it’s gonna be technology that rules. 

It’s never gonna flip to the other side. It’s gonna be a new power structure that takes over. 

It’s gonna be a new sex that isn’t even gonna be human, probably. It will be like every sex combined into a cloud or some shit. 

Some Matrix-type shit. 

Yeah. It’s gonna be the Matrix-archy. I don’t really like to get involved in politics, but—

Yeah but there’s just a consideration of the state of the world and us. 

Why do certain things make me upset? Why do certain things turn me on? Why am I—instead of thinking ‘this is wrong’—I was lucky because as a child nobody put any constraints on me about what my sexuality was. I was treated like a prodigal son, pretty much. I was born and raised in LA. I didn’t have a lot of racism or sexism until I was taught that. 

I was talking to people the other day and it’s like, at the end of the day, you have yourself. 

It’s easy to say that. But it’s so true and it’s one of the hardest things. I think I’m almost at least to the point of being able to love myself the most of all humans. But it’s taken a lot of time and self-research and research of the past. It is important that people fight for what they are so that they’re not hurt. What do they say? Two steps forward, one step back, always.

Sometimes it’s two or three steps back. 

Obviously I think we live in a really amazing time, and people will realize that later. Just like when old people go, “oh, back when I was young, it was amazing!” You hear people go, “I wish I lived in the eighties” and it’s like, well you don’t, so maybe you should make it work for you here. 

We met probably in what, 2017, 2018 at KXLU back when you were first planting those seeds of Patriarchy. I have this vivid memory of when you were recording—I can’t remember which one—but you were just screaming “fuck!”

That was for “Grind Your Bones”! That performance was so good that I asked you for that because I put it into the actual song! 

I remember sitting on the couch and hearing that, and the station advisor walks in as you’re singing that, and gives me such an intense stare. It was fabulous, because I think that’s very much at the core of Patriarchy. That moment.

That was the first time I really performed live with Patriarchy and my bandmate couldn’t make it because he was busy with another band. And I was upset that he couldn’t be there but then it was like a mushroom moment, like it’s just you. It’s you!

What do you think in that time has changed with Patriarchy, and what’s stayed the same? 

Well obviously the bandmates changed—and I laugh. It started with a really awesome friend named Andrew Means from 3Teeth. I just wanted to make music that I liked and that he liked. So it was kind of like a pet project for him that turned into a real project for me. That was great, then I finally got a label, DERO Arcade, and they were like we’re gonna put this out and you just do whatever you want, we’re not gonna mess with your vision at all. And I’m like ‘this is amazing!’ Then I just kept pushing it and finally was able to get some mixes. They were very very raw because we didn’t have a big budget. They were just recorded in Andrew’s house, pretty much. So you can hear chaos within that. 

Now because I decided to do that Reverse Circumcision album where I had artists that I know who are really amazing and talented that I listen to all the time, I was like, “How about you remix these stems so they become something different?” I was like, “This will be great because it’s quarantine and we can’t leave.” I became close with people in a different way. It wasn’t just like having remixes done. It was like they became new songs. And then I got more popular from that. Not because I was trying to use the popularity or whatever. It was just people who are amazing. They’re my friends, and they agreed to do remixes. And then I was like, I’m gonna make videos for some of them and have those people involved. For Drab Majesty, I dressed up like him because he couldn’t be in it. So I was like, “I’ll just be you then!” And Geneva [Jacuzzi] came over and we did a live stream Twitch event. All of a sudden quarantine became amazing. 

And also all that love stuff was happening. Whatever. Projection. And I was like, I’m gonna get through it by doing this. The guy I wrote all the songs about, he’s heard all the songs, and he loves them. He’s like, “Is this one about me? Oh wow!” I want to confront—I’m not gonna go and swim in the deep ocean at midnight and be scared, but you know what I’m talking about. I’m trying to not just accept things, but—

But encounter them.

Kind of like a hunt or a game. I don’t want to say what I’m doing is a game. I’m not using these people in my life as a game, which people might think. I want to have an adventure with the people in my life. That’s why the photoshoot we did was like an adventure, with the people in my life. It was interesting to see how the drummer and guitarist interacted with the lady. I just kind of let go for a bit and let it become part of me and what was happening. I think that’s kind of an Andy Warhol thing. Not saying I’m like him—but—that’s something he would do. He let the people around him become a part of him. 

I think that’s a whole other can of worms.

You have to repay people. You have to pay them and give them empathy and yourself. You can’t just use someone and not acknowledge them. That’s why I’m tired all the time. If I’m with someone in a moment, I want to give—I’m talking to you right now and I’m thinking of you right now. I’m not trying to blow my own horn or whatever, but I try to think about how I would want to be treated.

If I feel like I’m not respecting someone for some reason, if I think there’s something mean about them, I’ll be forgiving but I’ll distance myself. No one's fully evil, not even the most evil person. It’s like that Susan Sarandon movie when she goes to visit Sean Penn. What is that one? Fuck. Is it Dead Man Walking?

Hold on. Let me do a fact check.

She goes and talks to the serial killer in jail. And I kind of feel like I empathize with that. With humanity. It’s something so evil that he did but she just wanted to understand. I guess that’s kind of like In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, and all that. I’m not gonna be doing that because that sounds like it’s soul-sucking. Werner Herzog did an amazing series where he goes and talks to actual serial killers and horrible people. He talked about it in an interview later, and he said it was so draining on his soul. He felt that it aged him and he had to stop. They give everything to their work. That’s why David Lynch does his transcendental mediation. I don’t really watch his weather report but I watch it once in a while and I watched the one for yesterday, it was amazing. 

I’ve seen a few of those. 

Yesterday, obviously he was trying to do the weather, but then he just stopped and he was quiet for a full thirty seconds. And he was like, I just can’t talk anymore cause he was like, “Mr. Putin, I need to talk to you.” It was really intense. I felt like he was yelling at me, stern, in a loving way. There’s nothing we can do about Ukraine and people hurting each other, but you have to realize that what you do to other people comes back to you in some way. That’s your lie. And I put that in my album.

We’ve talked a lot about the self in the course of this, but can we talk about the album name? 

The album is called The Unself. The album name is also one of the songs. It’s a song I wrote on guitar. I used to play guitar as a child, but I stopped for a long time because I was in so many bands, and I just played keyboard, and everyone was a better guitarist. I was like I don’t need to play every instrument if someone else is better, blah blah blah, right? But then quarantine I was like, I’m just gonna play. So I started playing badly, and I just started feeling it. I would just write on acoustic guitar. It was amazing because I wouldn't have to plug stuff in. With an electric keyboard, or when you’re on Logic or whatever, you have to plug everything in, you’re not just there. So “The Unself” was a song I just started singing and crying. I just started saying, “Is this the Unself, what is this, this is my Unself,” over and over. I was realizing that the obsessions I was feeling for this person I thought I was in love with was taking me away from the self that I had worked so hard to make—the self that I was getting towards, it was suddenly taken away. 

Then I started drinking again. I’d stopped drinking during quarantine when I did the remixes and the live streams. I did so much work, I was back to myself. I was reading as much as I could, I was really feeling things. I was turning my phone off and lying outside on a cement slab, looking at the stars. I mean, not just looking at the stars,just doing my own sort of meditation. Whatever I was doing, it made me feel good. I was feeling like myself again. But then as soon as I was over one person, someone else came in. And I knew it was wrong. I knew it felt good, but it wasn’t gonna work. So I started writing about it. That’s pretty much what it is. It’s about questioning if this is the opposite of me, or is it something else. Because I think it’s important to love someone. But then you read about all these highly-advanced people and they’re pretty much celibate. How can you be both? How can you be a Kant, a Dionysus, and also Apollo? I’m letting myself become the Unself so I can experience this magical pain people have been writing about since the beginning of writing. We brush it off, like these crazy kids, they’re so in love. But it’s an intense addiction. Being a person who didn’t believe in that word—that’s what the Unself means.

Photographed by Paige MacCready