Anyone who has been to a metal festival over the past couple of years is almost guaranteed to have seen the girls from Nympherno there at some stage. Granted you may only know them as the hot, leather and latex laden girls who, among other things have quite the passion for fire.
This year at Hard Rock Hell the Nympherno girls where out in force once again and taking to the stage with many bands over the course of the weekend. From the likes of Attica Rage, Jettblack, Bonafide and Fozzy these girls brought the heat and wowed audiences all weekend. After the festival Hayley Leggs took some time to talk to us here at RockFusion about the group.
Kelly, Kate and I used to be in another performance group together, and would occasionally get booked by Area 51 Entertainment. When we were on gigs with them, there’d be fire breathers, dwarves, contortionists, jugglers, etc. We became friends with everyone there and they started to teach us when we were gigging together. Then we found Amy a year or two later, taught her and started up Nympherno together.
You can be seen on stage rubbing the fire up and down your arms and legs. Obviously there’s a lot of training and things to be aware of before you can get to a performing level. When you started out did you just jump right into it or was there a hesitation of what you’d be doing?
It took me a while to get up the courage to do it! You think it’ll be easy, you try to do it, but your brain immediately tells your body not to do it! Same with fire eating.
What does it take to do what you do on a nightly basis?
We’ve been doing it so long and so frequently now that we don’t need to rehearse any more, unless there’s a set choreography to the show or we’re working on new skills. I tend not to get nervous any more unless it’s a really big show. We just try to make sure we’re as prepared as possible, and it helps if we’re familiar with the music we’re performing to. A good latex or leather outfit helps too!
Given all your training I’d imagine there’s still been quite a few burns and close calls over the years with bands and people running around all over the stage. Any interesting stories you can share?
Just a couple of days ago I managed to set fire to my eye! That was the first time that had happened! It’s rather scabby and gross now! Kate had a flaming nipple tassel burn the hell out of her boob once, Amy inhaled a flame on her first fire breathing gig and was coughing up blood for a couple of days, I burned a pretty big wound in myself from a red hot rod landing on me during an angle grinding show and set my bra on fire onstage once! Most of those happened a while ago and we’ve learned valuable lessons from all of them. The setting the eye on fire thing was just unlucky really! We’ve never damaged any of the people or things around us, just ourselves!
Am I right in saying Nympherno was involved in the Jettblack video for Raining Rock?
That’s right, Amy was in the music video. I was in LA when they shot that, but I was photographed fire breathing for the cover of their album of the same name when I got back. We frequently perform with Jettblack onstage too, including their appearances at Hard Rock Hell two years in a row, and Sonisphere.
Fozzy was an exciting one to perform for. Amy is a huge fan of theirs and the song was great to perform to. The band put in so much energy onstage.
You where invited out by the Fozzy guys to perform at their London show, how did that go?
Unfortunately we were informed on the day that Electric Ballroom wouldn’t allow fire performance or even angle grinding… Slightly silly as angle grinding involves no risk to the surrounding area at all, but oh well! It was good to be able to watch the band from the crowd this time. They’ve asked us to perform onstage with them at their Bloodstock show next year anyway, that’ll be even better!
Did you get to see many of the bands at Hard Rock Hell when you weren’t performing?
We were fairly busy most of the time, but we managed to watch quite a few bands from our stilts during stilt walking sets!
What’s your thoughts on Hard Rock Hell compared to something like Download or Bloodstock?
I have a real soft spot for Hard Rock Hell. It feels like so much of a community there and you run into the same people all weekend. I absolutely love Download and Bloodstock too, but the Hard Rock Hell chalet parties after bands finish cannot be beaten.