Death Metal Grandma

Or great-grandma maybe: This 96-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Is the Vocalist of a Death Metal Band

She may not look like one, but 96-year-old Inge Gingsberg is a rock star. She is the songwriter and lead vocalist of death metal group TritoneKings and is known as “Death-Metal Grandma”.

Inge has had quite a remarkable life. She grew up in Austria, but was forced to flee to Switzerland in the early days of World War 2, to avoid persecution. She spent years in a refugee camp, and after the war, she and her husband relocated to Hollywood, where they had to start their new life from scratch. Inge was able to begin a career in the music industry, composing songs for some of the most popular singers at the time, such as Nat King Cole, Doris Day, and Dean Martin. After a while, Inge started to get tired of Hollywood life, and decided to reinvent herself. Today, she is the vocalist of a death metal band.

“It was all fake, so I left,” Inge Gingsberg said about her decision to leave her musical career in Hollywood behind. She continued to write lyrics and poetry in her old age, but she grew frustrated with the fact that she no longer had much of an audience.

“Life is a lonely land,” she lamented, “All your parents and relatives are gone. Your friends are gone, nobody really cares what you have to say.”

But Inge was always a fighter, so instead of giving up, she realized that she would have to find a way to reinvent herself if she wanted to be taken seriously in today’s world. Inspiration came to her when Pedro De Siva, a frequent musical collaborator, read some of her work.

“One summer, she started writing these lyrics about blood and death, and I told her, ‘this sounds like death metal lyrics.’”

Such a comfort for my old age.

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