Longtime heavy metal vocalist Leather Leone says she is stepping back from actively pursuing music, citing exhaustion with the festival circuit and the demands of modern music-industry self-promotion.
"I'm gonna step back from music...I'm just tired of being the pursuer as opposed to being pursued," Leone told Ada of Poisoned Rock. She described a career defined largely by fighting for opportunities rather than having them come to her: "The music world is so fickle. I've never really been grabbed with open arms. I've always been the underdog." Leone also pointed to a broader industry shift toward extreme metal subgenres as something that has left less room for her style, adding candidly of the current landscape: "I'm just not into all this...all this self-promotion." She noted she has operated for most of her career without conventional industry infrastructure, saying, "I've never had a manager. I've never really had a booking agent."
Leone rose to prominence as frontwoman of CHASTAIN, recording five albums with the band between 1985 and 1990 before releasing her solo debut, "Shock Waves," in 1989. She subsequently stepped away from music for roughly two decades to focus on animal rescue work, returning with the SLEDGE LEATHER project in 2012 and solo albums "Leather II" in 2018 and "[We Are The] Chosen" in 2022 — her most recent release, which came after four years of pursuing festival and touring opportunities that she says ultimately proved discouraging.
While Leone stopped short of framing the move as a permanent retirement, her comments suggest she intends to step out of the pursuit of new opportunities and reassess her relationship with the music industry on her own terms going forward.