THE SUPREME: AN INTERVIEW WITH MOLLY MARIE KENT

By Alex S. Johnson

Molly Marie Kent is quite simply one of the most electrifying creators in the rising metal underground. Onstage she is The Supreme, the Witch Queen architect behind Nashville’s rising Doom Stoner metal phenomenon Omenbringer, a band designed to seduce visually and devastate sonically.” She has built Omenbringer as a witch-coated, sex-positive, fantasy-driven metal coven, a project where spectacle and substance coexist, a band that looks like a ritual and sounds like a thunderstorm.

From the moment she appeared in my virtual studio, I felt that unmistakable charge—the recognition of someone operating from sovereignty, not performance.

I began with lineage. “You’ve talked about your inspiration coming from your background in performance, in burlesque,” I said, “and also Tolkien, Bettie Page… Frank Frazetta…the thiccness, right?”

“That’s right,” she said.

I told her how my collaborator Lee Bailes (screenwriter, director, author/poet) and I had been talking about writing a movie called Big Titty Goth Girlfriend, and how uncanny it was when her song appeared.

“It’s almost like your song manifested,” I said. “We were both like, whoa, dude. There it is.”

She laughed, delighted by the synchronicity.

I told her how performances like “Stir the Cauldron” strike me as “next level… really, really amazing when you have a woman who’s not afraid of being both sovereign and sexual.” She nodded, fully inhabiting that duality.

When I asked about her female musical inspirations, she didn’t hesitate. “Cherie Currie, amazing, I love The Runaways and Joan Jett, I love the raw sexual energy of that band.”

But she gravitates toward artists with their own worlds: “Amy Winehouse is an enormous influence… her voice, her raw realness in her lyrics.” She added Alison Krauss for “beautiful singing,” and then pivoted to the frontmen who shaped her: “Phil Lynott is the greatest frontman of all time. And I’ll stand on that. I’ll die on that hill.” Ozzy Osbourne follows immediately.

She loves Black Sabbath for their paradox: “They are perceived as this dark and evil band, but really a lot of their lyrics are very, very positive… almost like spells and witchcraft of positivity.” Iron Maiden is another pillar: “I love storytelling… I like Marty Robbins… I like all kinds of music that tells stories.” Her heart, she said, “is definitely living all the time” in classic rock.

What fascinates me most is how she threads classical music into doom metal. “A lot of our influence… is actually from classical music,” she said. “Distinctly and very obviously would be A Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky. There are multiple themes within Thicc Darkness (Omenbringer’s debut full-length) that come directly from that piece of music.”

She wants her music to “seem vaguely familiar… likened to the greats… but fresh.”

Fantasia was her gateway drug. “I was very, very much into Fantasia,” she said. “The devil comes to earth and is having a crazy party… that animation sequence is incredible… it gives me chills. It has titties in it, you know? Like, it is epic.”

When we talked about the Omenbringer song Big Tiddy Goth Girlfriend, she revealed the deeper spellwork behind the camp. “Part of our mission as a band is to diversify the metal scene… to make women feel empowered and comfortable to come and have their tits out at our shows.”

She calls her fanbase “our coven of kindness.” And she emphasized the importance of trans fans: “Especially our trans Big Titty goth girlfriends… we want them to feel comfortable, seen, safe… their lives are hard enough already.”

Safety is ritual. “At any time… if you feel uncomfortable, there’s one of five of our band members, or 500 of our actual coven members, that are gonna make sure that you get to your vehicle safely.”

The song itself was a manifestation spell. “It was actually about two of my muses… I wanted to befriend them… my spell has come true. They are both very good friends of mine now.”

She added, “We do real magic when we’re writing our songs… manifesting real and powerful wishes.”

We drifted into literature—Baudelaire, Whitman, Stoker, Tolkien—because that’s where both our hearts live. She told me about “Chevalure,” her Baudelaire‑inspired song: “This poem… describes the fascination I have with this very particular type of woman… long, black, flowing hair… perfumed with cigarettes and roses.” She studied French in college: “I do speak French.” I told her I majored in Comparative Literature and have translated Baudelaire.

Her second album, A Night on Black Mountain, is a concept album: “laying siege to an evil witch’s castle… failing miserably… shipwrecking on her castle… being tortured in the dungeon… having to fight a dragon… narrowly escaping through a trap door.”

She’s pushing herself to write “as beautifully as possible… with as much literary nods as possible.” She loves hymnal language—“ye this, ye that”—and avoids repetitive choruses: “I want people to have a hard time remembering the lyrics… it’s tricky on purpose.”

When I asked about her occult origins, she went straight to childhood. “I was leaning into the occult as a young person… doing spells with my other witchy friends in middle school.”

Church repelled her: “I hated going to church… big ugly megachurch ones.” Fantasia seduced her. As she matured, she embraced her true persona: “If you’re fortunate and brave, you can lean fully into your true self… The Supreme is not a character. It is me at my most fancy, exuberant, wild side.”

She quoted Whitman unknowingly—“we all contain multitudes”—and I pointed it out. She laughed: “I didn’t know that came from him.”

Her spiritual path moved from Christianity to atheism to Satanism to something fluid. “Whatever I feel like at the time,” she said. She identifies with Satan partly because “I really love trolling the Christians.”

Mushrooms became medicine. “Every time I buy mushrooms, I can feel that very distinctly.” She keeps a tin labeled “souvenirs from my mushroom trip,” filled with handwritten revelations. One lesson: “I don’t have to love someone… I can love someone from afar.”

Her future album Sinister Trip will be “a dark mushroom trip… exploring death as a theme.”

When I asked about her persona, she said it’s “an amalgamation of Maleficent… Elvira… Dolly Parton… and Bettie Page.” She wants to be “everybody in the South’s honorary goth auntie… very campy, very sexy… but also very generous, very giving.”

Her ambitions are colossal. “We’re gonna be the next legacy band… the next Black Sabbath… Kiss meets Black Sabbath.” She imagines playing the Sphere in Las Vegas: “They turn the Sphere into a giant orb with my eyes… flying over the audience on my broom… we’re gonna be the biggest band in the world.”

I told her, “Yeah, you are.”

She laughed and said she wants a statue downtown: “Just like Bettie Page… I’ll be the third witch downtown.”

We closed with gratitude. “Thank you so much for having me,” she said. “Thoughtful questions.”

“Thank you so much, Molly.”

“Have a great day.”

“You too.”

Dubbed “the Baudelaire of our time” by The Crow (1994) screenwriter John Shirley, Alex S. Johnson is a transfemme polymath spoken word performer/author/editor and publisher with Nocturnicorn Books. His 18 published books include two archived at Harvard’s Widener Library for their cultural significance by senior cataloguer Craig K. Thomas, the brother of New Weird legend Jeffrey Thomas. He has been endorsed by the likes of Mort Castle, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Marleen S. Barr, R.U. Sirius, Jarboe and Jeffrey Thomas and has had work appear in such prestigious outlets as Rolling Stone magazine. He has made publishing co-appearances with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Micheline, Ramsey Campbell, Charles Bukowski, Kate Bornstein, Susie Bright, Patrick Califia and Neeli Cherkovski and performed with Iris Berry, Danielle Willis, K.R. Morrison, Puma Perl, Tricia Warden, Loren Rhoads, Ellyn Maybe and Richard Modiano. Johnson lives with his family in Carmichael, California.