When Lauren Tate was a teenager, she felt like an alien. As a lonely kid growing up in Barnsley, she had been making music and singing in her bedroom since she was 12, but her ambitions were mocked by her classmates and derided by her teachers. “I didn’t have many friends at all,” she says today. “I was a loser, a loner. I would get bullied at school and people would make fun of my voice. All the teachers used to tell me I would never make it in music. It was constantly hammered into my head that it was a pipe dream.”
Well, what did they know? Today, the 26-year-old self-styled ‘brat-punk’ performs under the moniker Delilah Bon. And her spiky, unapologetic fusion of punk, nu metal, pop and hip hop has seen her join genre- smashing artists such as Scene Queen (who she’s toured with), ALT BLK ERA (who she collaborated with on the song Witch), and Cassyette on the front lines of metal’s new guard. Brash, confrontational and political, her force-of-nature, self-titled, 2021 debut album was a call to arms for a diverse, enthusiastic fanbase, while her gigs feel more like exorcisms to sweat and scream out the challenges of modern life. “I love shouting,” Delilah nods. “It’s such a release. I want to be seen. I want to be heard. I want to help people. I want to channel my anger and I put it somewhere.”
