German multi-instrumentalist Vanessa Funke has accomplished something many full bands would struggle to achieve: five albums in five years, writing and recording nearly everything herself. Her versatility is evident in her approach to melodic death metal, which combines the dark romanticism of gothic metal with the ferocity of its Scandinavian roots. Her music has an aching beauty to it, with haunting guitar melodies and keyboards that transition into fierce riffs and harsh vocals. As a microcosm of her work, notice how delicate piano and synthesizer tones introduce “Dead Souls” before distorted guitars take over. Her softer singing contrasts with her feral growls, allowing the song’s melancholy to coexist with its aggression.
Her fifth album, Aura, released in October, finds Funke writing about some of her most personal experiences. The songs address her life as a trans woman and the domestic violence she has endured. On “Infinite Skies,” she reflects on wishing she’d had the courage to come out publicly sooner. With “Coherence,” she explores the unexpected emptiness she experienced following gender-affirming surgery, having lived with dysphoria for so long that she struggled to understand life without it. Funke describes writing songs as a form of self-therapy, helping her process painful memories and, perhaps, make some peace with parts of her past.
Speaking with Funke, her kindness and humility are immediately apparent. She’s open about what she’s been through and thoughtful about what she’s learned. She spoke with Invisible Oranges about the stories behind Aura, her musical influences, her experiences as a trans woman in metal, and her concerns about the rise of right-wing politics in Germany.
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For people discovering you for the first time through this interview, what do you want them to know about your project?
I would describe my music as mainly melodic death metal with some influences from both funeral and death doom, some black metal influences and a little bit of Gothic metal mixed in.
What was your childhood like, and when did your interest in music start forming?
Music was always around the house, in the car, everywhere, and as a child, I listened to everything they listened to, of course. My father is more rock-oriented. He had ZZ Top and AC/DC and stuff like that, whereas my mother was more interested in the ’60s and ’70s. But also on the radio, we had a lot of ’80s music. I still listen to a lot of it. Most of my record collection is ’80s stuff.
What is the origin story of Vanessa Funke? How did it all begin?
I started learning guitar in 2008. I was then really heavily into Iron Maiden. I loved this guitar playing, so I wanted to do that myself. In 2013, I was invited to join a melodic death metal band because a few years prior, I was introduced to more extreme metal bands. I stayed in that band until 2018. It really shaped my playing a lot, and everything that I did as solo work, I basically based on that.
What made you decide to leave the band and start your own solo project?
It was a situation that I didn’t have much control over. They didn’t fire me or anything, but I was in a pretty difficult time of my life at that point and had a very, very difficult relationship with another person, and that led me to quit. What was really nice of them was that they gave me back all the songs I’d written for the band that they hadn’t used yet, so I could use them for my own music.
You’ve released five albums in five years. Do you tend to start thinking about the next record as soon as is finished?
Usually, I record ideas that I have straight away. After a while, a lot of songs can accumulate. I basically put them all into a folder and always ask, "What’s the total running time of this? Does this count as an album?"
If I see it’s somewhere between 40 and 50 minutes, I’d say, okay, see if these all fit together. I like to have the next album almost ready when I release. I just released Aura, and I basically have the sixth album ready. The music is ready. I still need to write lyrics, but it’s nearly finished.
You’ve talked about Ville Friman of Insomnium having a major influence on your songwriting. What have you learned from studying the way he writes guitar melodies and longer songs?
Ville Friman has a certain ear for melodies and a certain melancholic feel, and in my opinion, he’s of the best songwriters in modern metal. It’s kind of melancholic, sometimes pretty dreamy, very melodic. It just contains everything that I really love.
Since Insomnium was of the first more extreme bands that I knew, it was also of the earliest things that I tried to learn myself. I think it was “Weather the Storm” that I learned back in 2011 or so. It’s basically become of my biggest influences.
As a trans woman making metal, you’re also showing other trans women who want to become musicians that there’s a place for them. What does it mean to know you’re potentially opening that door for someone else?
It’s an interesting thought that I’m opening doors for others because I don’t know how far my reach actually is as an artist.
I have been influenced by several others. When I started out, I didn’t really know anyone else. I think the first that I knew was Ivy Jayne Lance, who also mixed two of my albums. I found out mostly through Instagram about all the other artists, and it was quite inspiring for me.
If I am inspiring others, that would be a crazy thought, a very beautiful thought, too. Especially in modern times, where, for political reasons, it is not really safe to be trans in several places. It’s really empowering to see so many trans women using their creativity to do something good and showing themselves out there still, regardless.
How has your experience as a trans woman in metal been? Do you feel the scene has become more inclusive, or are there still barriers to acceptance?
While I myself didn’t notice any direct pushback, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any. I’m very lucky with this circle in the music scene I’m in, as within it, it is all very accepting and inclusive, but it does feel like outside there are people who avoid it. It also feels like this has gotten worse during the course of the last year up until now, especially regarding the shift towards right-wing politics around the world.
“Last Dawn” imagines the final hours before an apocalyptic event. What was behind that imagery?
I was inspired by very different songs about the Cold War. This is something that I am very afraid of in modern times right now because with all these wars going on around the world, you never know what is happening next. When does the Third World War start? I’m basically constantly worried. So that went into that song.
Alicia Cordisco plays the guitar solo on “Last Dawn.” What made her the person you wanted for that part?
She’s an amazing guitarist and a very good friend of mine. I’m not a really good solo player. I have other solo on that album that I actually did pretty well, but this is usually not the case. I was looking for somebody who actually can play great solos, and she was the first that came to my mind. So I asked her, and she said yes. It was absolutely wonderful to collaborate with her.
“Fading Memory” deals with losing memories. Where did that song begin for you?
“Fading Memory” came from a time several years ago when I started having trouble with memory loss. I don’t know what caused it, although I still think it was related to stress. It felt like my brain just couldn’t keep up.
It was pretty scary because I’d always had a really good memory. Suddenly, I was struggling to remember things that had always come easily to me.
The song started with my own experience, but it also got me thinking about what it must be like for people living with dementia or Alzheimer’s. It was a really interesting thought, so I decided to put it into words.
“Coherence” and “Infinite Skies” address your experiences as a trans woman. Was there anything you found yourself able to say in these songs that you hadn’t put into your music before?
Definitely. Both songs obviously deal with two very different topics. “Infinite Skies” was basically me thinking, “I wish I had the courage to come out sooner in my life,” at least to the public. My family knew it all much, much earlier. I wrote the song as a kind of encouragement to my younger self.
“Coherence” is written out of my very own personal perspective. Back in 2024, I had SRS, bottom surgery. I grew up with this feeling of dysphoria. I didn’t really know a life without this feeling, and it’s a very, very strong feeling. After surgery, I thought, okay, I should be fine with my body. I should be full of joy, and that didn’t happen. I felt weirdly empty.
I later realized that was because all of this dysphoria, all this very bad feeling, disappeared, and I didn’t know that feeling of living without it. That felt so weirdly empty. Because I was so confused, it basically gave me the inspiration to write it down. Obviously, I’m absolutely full of joy, and I’m so happy this is finally something in my past. Everything is fine now. But at that time, the first half of a year was absolutely weird for me.
“Dead Souls” is the longest song on Aura at nearly nine minutes, and you’ve described it as particularly important to you. Where did that song begin, and what does it mean to you?
Musically, that song began in late 2018. It’s of those songs that I got back from my old band because they didn’t use it. It was too good to put aside, so I decided to re-record it for this album.
Lyrically, it deals with the two and a half years that followed after I left the band. As I said, I was in a very, very difficult, really abusive relationship. I wouldn’t even go as far as calling it a relationship. It was basically pure horror. I’m still working on getting over all of that stuff right now. I put a lot of these things that were going on in my mind into that song. It’s actually the second set of lyrics I wrote for this because the first were too drastic. They were really a bit too explicit for my taste, so I really toned it down.
You write about a lot of very personal experiences. Was it cathartic for you to put something so painful into a song, even after toning down the original lyrics?
It certainly helps. I always tell people that this is some sort of self-therapy for me. It really helps to get over things and not let them go around in circles around your mind all the time. Focusing it, putting it down on paper. I’ve noticed that after I recorded songs with serious topics, especially with that particular topic, it really has helped me a lot. And I’m definitely in a much better place right now than I was several years ago.
“Death’s Hand” turns toward mortality, something that has appeared elsewhere in your writing. Has the way you think about death changed over the years?
It certainly did. I think death still is, in modern-day society, sort of a taboo theme. Nobody wants to talk about it. For a few years now, I had a very good relationship towards that topic. It might sound strange, but for me, it’s basically clear that death is also part of life. Since it will inevitably happen to anyone, it’s something that I like to write about. I used to think about it a lot. Nowadays, I’m more relaxed when it comes to life, thinking, might as well just have a good time.
“Empty Heart” gives your clean vocals much more space and takes the record toward power ballad territory. What inspired that direction?
I didn’t think about it as a sort of power ballad in the first place, which kind of happened to be in the end. I was inspired by some more pop-ish kind of Gothic metal I listened to in my youth by a little German project called Eisblume. They had a song of the same name, and that gave me the impulse to try something slow with piano and bring out my clean voice.
I don’t have the most powerful clean vocals. When having heavy and fast guitars around, they drown my voice. So it’d be nice to have a song that gives me a bit to sing clearly and more melodically than I usually do with my growling and shouting.
There are strong ’80s influences throughout Aura. What keeps bringing you back to the music of that decade?
The ’80s always enter my music kind of subconsciously. Most of my music collection is ’80s music. It obviously has a lot to do with the patches I use from synthesizers and everything that I do in the background, textures and stuff like that. I originally intended Aura to be a pretty modern-sounding album, so it is pretty interesting that all of these 40-year-old influences shine through.
What can synthesizers or electronics give you emotionally that you can’t get from guitars alone?
I’m a huge synthesizer fan. I don’t have the money to get any of these, but I have loads of plugins, and I love to play around with them. There’s this part in “Fading Memory,” right at the beginning, all these jangly guitars come in, and then there’s this rhythmic loop that starts. That’s actually a preset from the Korg M1 synthesizer.
All these textures, I couldn’t recreate them on guitars. Synth pads really add some depth to it, in spaces that would feel weirdly empty if I just left them with guitars, drums and bass. They’re definitely an integral part of my sound.
“Into the Night” closes Aura. What made you know that was where the album needed to end?
“Into the Night” was written around the same time as “Last Dawn.” Since they both have faster energy and some black metal influences in there, I thought this would really make a nice bookend. “Into the Night” is also a song that I wish more people would pay attention to because it’s actually maybe my personal favorite from this album.
It’s actually a highly political song. I don’t know if many people notice that because it’s obviously a very German thing that I’m talking about there, which is my fear of the rising power of the AfD party, which is the right-wing party that is getting more and more power here in Germany. My fear of the consequences that this can have. There’s this line, “Brown lies their faith, spoiled rotten like the putrid hearts.” I think that’s the first time I became really explicitly political in a song. I usually didn’t write about that stuff, despite being an outspoken person against all of that shit. I just had to write a song about this because I’m so afraid of what will come in the future.
Why do you think you hadn’t written about politics before, especially since you’ve always been outspoken about these issues?
I’m not really sure why. I think it was just because I found it very hard to put into words what I was thinking.
There’s a slight language barrier because I write my songs in English. Of course, my native language being German, I have to translate all of that. And a lot of times it really didn’t go well, I felt. Also, talking about political things that happen in other countries, I’m not always the most informed person about everything. So obviously, I don’t want to say anything wrong. If you’re talking about political things, you have to get the facts right. I’m not really always in the loop with everything, especially going on in the US, where most of my listeners actually are.
So I kept away from that for a long time. This is something that is happening right in front of my own doors here.
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Five albums into the project, what part of your music do you still want to explore?
I’m definitely going to stay in this more melodic death-focused direction, even if it disappoints a few of those listeners who like my more black metal-influenced stuff. This is where I’m at home.
What I eventually will do is add some more folkish instruments like mandolin and more acoustic guitars, but basically staying in a similar direction.
I have something big planned in terms of the next album, and big is just in terms of runtime for particular songs on this. So that’s what I’m going to say.
How did you first get connected with your label, Liminal Dread Productions?
They actually wrote to me! I was too shy and scared to write to them myself. I had wanted to approach several labels and pitch my music, but Liminal Dread contacted me after hearing a demo I’d posted in a Discord group where someone from the label was also a member. He listened to it and asked “Would you like to join us?” And I said yes.
It’s been a really good experience. They also mix my albums, which is nice because I’m too much of a perfectionist to do that myself. I can mix my own stuff, but I think I’d still be working on it now because I’d always find something to change. So I’m really happy to have someone else take over, and the results have been fantastic.
Why did you decide to remove your music from Spotify?
Some of my music is available there because it gets uploaded by my labels. But the I was responsible for, I took down. The first reason is obviously a financial thing. It’s not very cheap to keep those albums up there, and I’m a person who is pretty poor. I couldn’t afford to keep them up. But then there’s obviously this thing with AI going around stealing from musicians, which I absolutely despise.
And other things that a lot of streaming services, especially Spotify, do which are very unfair to the artists, like not paying them fairly or not at all. Especially with Spotify, some of the business decisions are pretty questionable, to say the least. Their CEO is paying money into warfare technologies and stuff like that. I don’t want to support that
As a multi-instrumentalist who plays nearly everything on your records, do you have a particular instrument you enjoy playing most, or you feel most connected to?
I would consider myself mainly a guitarist. I would still say that guitar is my favorite instrument. It’s usually the first thing I grab when I have an idea, or when I’m just sitting down and playing around, thinking, yeah, this could make a nice song. It usually starts with guitars. It’s rare that I use other instruments for that.
I think in second place, it’s actually keyboards. But guitar doesn’t even have to be plugged into an amp or something. I can just play it clean, and it sparks ideas. So it’s definitely my favorite instrument.
As a child, I always wanted to learn guitar. Then I went into the local marching band and played trombone for two years. I don’t know how to do that nowadays. I’ve forgotten everything about it! But the first instrument I really seriously committed to was guitar.
Have there been any moments when you realized just how much your music meant to someone?
I know a lot of people are actually fans, which is still quite incredible to me. That people like my music that much to call themselves fans. There was person in particular that told me that a song really helped them through a very difficult time in their life. That was pretty mind-blowing to me. That person later went on to paint the artwork for my album Requiem. They basically did that as a favor for me because of the songs really meant so much to Julian. This is really incredible if people tell me something like that. I cannot believe it.
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Aura is available now via Liminal Dread Productions.