Rock music is about to get a shot in the arm from Cassyette, a no-holds-barred musician from Essex who is loudly and unashamedly reclaiming her rock roots. Her journey has taken her through everything from drum’n’bass and house to pure pop and the result is a chest-thumping mix of pop, rock and metal, addressing everything from feminism to trauma. Cassyette is loud, proud and taking absolutely no shit from anyone.

It took her some time to find that path. Growing up in Essex, she attended strict Catholic all-girls’ school where she didn’t feel that she fit in with anyone - “I fucking hated school. I think it was just that I didn't really know who I was, so I ended up kind of a reject” - and found solace in emo, spending lunch breaks with Fall Out Boy, You Me At Six and Green Day. “The first band I was in was a rock band with two of my best mates. And to be honest, we just pissed around the whole time.” Fortunately, a neighbour and close friend of her dad’s who lived nearby was a producer with a studio in his house. “We made a slow rock album with him - it kind of sounded like the Dixie Chicks... then I just carried on writing with him for years.”

As she grew up, the rock-leaning music of her teens fell out of her regular rotation. A few years of DJing and producing revealed her talent for writing pop melodies and irresistible toplines. Though spinning records was fun, Cassyette’s natural energy and charisma really needed a bigger stage. “I get really bored easily - and I think that’s why I kept moving between things,” she says of her genre-hopping adolescence. About three years ago she began performing with a band again.

“Back then I used to get such bad stage fright,” she recalls. Pop music doesn’t leave much room for error; she soon realised that rock allows much more freedom. “I think that's partly why I I started making heavier music because you just can't hold back, the cobwebs just get blown out. Like as soon as the first fucking note hits, you can do whatever the fuck you want.” Musically she finally felt that she was on the right path. “The moment something stuck was when I started making music that I loved, as opposed to making music because it was easy.”

In 2020, everything changed. Coronavirus gradually swept its way across the world putting all plans on hold and then: Cassyette’s father died. “It was really sudden. And the trauma of that was such a big catalyst for the music,” she says looking back. Pop songs didn’t seem deep enough to hold the emotions she was experiencing, the lightness of their touch completely out of step with how she was feeling. ““My influences have always been in rock. My all time favourite band is Motley Crue. So the music got a lot darker and angrier - all of these new songs are really about working through trauma. It just felt the most me and I suppose after everything that happened, I think you just sort of want to go back and reminisce.”

Cassyette has spent the last few months locked in her makeshift home studio. Lit by fairy lights and watched over by Baby Yoda and Hello Kitty, she has been finessing the last of the songs for her upcoming album, [Cassyette], all in a little pink box room in her home in Essex. “I think now the music has turned this corner - it’s so, so heavy now. You could even compare it to dance music in ways, at its core.” Working with The Prodigy collaborator Olly Burden has also brought those hardcore dance sounds out. “So then it became so clear in my head to draw from what I was making when I was DJing as well as the rock influence. So now I combine the two, with all the pop top lines.”

The songs themselves are heavy in more than just sound. They address issues close to Cassyette’s hearts, from her grief and the void where spirituality should be, to toxic relationships and sexual assault. “I've always drawn from everything that's going on in my life, so quite a lot of my songs are quite situational,” she says. “The first lot of songs is quite painful because a lot of what I’ve written has been drawn from the trauma of losing my dad and then a lot of it's based on lockdown and anxiety and mental health problems.” Songs are full of allusions and suggestions that maybe don’t become clear to the listener until the album is experienced as a whole; ‘Behind Closed Doors’ is more than just a song name, it’s the key to the songs themselves. The blanks are filled by the secretive, private things that happen out of view.

Dear Goth is full of religious imagery, a gut-punch of a song about where we find spirituality and belonging in a godless society (Cassyette herself is an atheist). It follows winding melodies with guttural screams, like a hymn sung by the devil. Prison Purse shudders with repressed rage, its title her sister’s comedic euphemism for pussy. “It’s a very personal song,” Cassyette says. “It’s about sexual assault, some things I’ve been though that aren’t ok. I wanted to write a song about something that’s really serious in an empowering way - like, ‘Fuck you, don’t fucking touch me’.”

The word ‘petrichor’ is not just a beautiful word but also a beautiful concept. It refers to the smell in the air after rain, and the song it is named for is about leaving trauma behind. “Everyone knows that smell. It's such a nice smell, so earthy and pure. And I thought, you know what, after all of this trauma I'm really excited about the year ahead.” Written after a cathartic phone call with a friend, the middle eight yearns for rebirth. “I want it to be there for people right now who are going through so much. I want it to be a glimmer of hope.”

With Cassyettte’s marriage of disparate genres and determination to face difficult emotions head on, [title] is a record full of blood-letting and healing. It’s fitting, in many ways, that she cites Pink as the artist she most looks up to. “When we were younger, listening to her, I felt like I could be whoever I wanted to be,” she says. “She makes you feel like you can take over the world and you don't have to be a basic bitch about it. She’s a gladiator.” There’s a generation of girls out there about to feel the same about Cassyette. Watch out world, she’s coming.