HUNTRESS Singer JILL JANUS Discusses Lifelong Battle With Mental Illness, Recent Cancer Diagnosis

July 16, 2015

Singer Jill Janus of the Los Angeles-based, occult-themed traditional heavy metal band HUNTRESS has revealed to Revolver magazine that she was recently diagnosed with uterine cancer. She said: "During the process of writing and recording our third album, I began to feel like something bad was growing within me. When we were on tour with AMON AMARTH, I started to bleed heavily between my periods. I had a procedure, and my doctor found early stages of cancer in my uterus. I will have a hysterectomy in June. I know I'll survive. I've survived much worse."

Janus also spoke about her lifelong battle with mental illness. She said: "I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder first, when I was 20. I started to show signs of it when I was 13, though, and I struggled with it through high school. But it started to get dangerous in my early teens. By the time I was 20 and living in Manhattan, it was very, very difficult for me. That's when I was admitted into a mental health facility and was diagnosed bipolar with schizoaffective disorder, which progressed into schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder."

She added: "I was suicidal constantly. I was very suicidal early on in my life. Then in my mid-20s, it shifted to full-blown mania, where I can't really remember much of my 20s. I can't remember anybody from high school, either. I lost my long-term memory and can't remember names, faces, or even places. We'll be at a venue on tour and Blake [Meahl, HUNTRESS guitarist] will be like, 'We've played here two times before,' but I'll have no recollection."

HUNTRESS's third studio album, titled "Static", will be released on September 25 via Napalm Records. The CD was produced by Paul Fig (Grammy-nominated engineer who has previously worked with ALICE IN CHAINS, DEFTONES, TRIVIUM, GHOST) and Jim Rota (FIREBALL MINISTRY, executive producer for "Sonic Highways" series and producer of "Sound City" movie),and was engineered and mixed by Fig.

A snippet of a new HUNTRESS song, "Flesh", can be streamed using the SoundCloud widget below.

Vance Kelly (SLAYER, ALICE IN CHAINS, EVANESCENCE, GHOST) has once again delivered stunning album artwork for HUNTRESS. The band's creative unity with Kelly remains strong, with Vance having also created album covers for HUNTRESS's previous CDs "Spell Eater" and "Starbound Beast".

huntressstaticcd

Find more on Huntress
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).