Full Name: Her full name is Isabel Ana-Maria Martinez de la Cruz. She doesn't have any particular disdain for the name or anything, it's just really damn long, so she's just been Izzie Martinez since she moved to the States.

Stage Name: Nope.

Age: Forty, as of 17 January.

Appearance: Izzie is nothing if not a distinct presence, standing head and shoulders over nearly all her peers with broad shoulders and a barrel-chested build. Her dark skin is pockmarked from place to place with scars, birthmarks, a couple of tattoos (they're from her younger years, back when she was still living in Colombia), patches of discoloured skin just a shade lighter than the rest on her upper arms, throat, and back. She wears her greying black hair in long, proud curls not unlike the mane of a lion, framing an angular face with high cheekbones and a pointed nose, and her heavy-lidded brown eyes are set beneath severe, hard brows. Her stage attire is no different from her day-to-day wardrobe, which mostly consists of an old biker jacket over some random shirt, a pair of jeans, some boots.

ya girl

Role: Lonesome Matsuzaka's side character, guitarist and vocalist of Psychosis.

Musical Style: Despite a musical upbringing primarily rooted in thrash metal and hardcore punk-- as reflected in the earliest recordings she appeared on as a vocalist-- Izzie has since developed a style firmly entrenched in the realms of technical and brutal death metal. Primarily influenced by bands like Suffocation and Devourment, her work in Psychosis is characterised in large part by breakneck blasting sections, chunkier grooves, and a penchant for abrupt time signature and tempo shifts; she's not much of a lead guitarist and never seemed to take much of an interest in shredding, or developing her own style of soloing. Her vocals manifest mostly in the form of a deep, guttural bellow, occasionally drifting up in pitch but not quite edging into screaming territory; earlier recordings, particularly with her sister, featured a hardcore punk-influenced snarl.

While her professional career has been rooted in metal, she does have a fondness for playing flamenco and is a talented finger-picker; there's a hint of that in Psychosis, where you might catch a riff or two that clearly makes use of hybrid picking.

Instruments: Her main guitar for anything in A tuning (like Psychosis) is an old Gibson SG-- she's got a few others, but this is the one you're going to see her wielding in the studio and on the stage, and it does seem to be nearest and dearest to her heart.

Personality: The foibles of youth have unfortunately burdened Izzie with a certain reputation for abrasiveness and perfectionism bordering on violent at times, but she's mellowed out in a major fashion in the years since; it's hard to see that angry, caustic personality in the rather soft-spoken, private woman she's since become. However, vestiges of the old Izzie yet linger, manifesting in the Mussolini-esque control she exerts over her band and her ruthless approach to bettering her music and her musicians. These elements-- in conjunction with her preference for privacy and a strict line between professional and personal, an ethos which can easily be mistaken for arrogance-- make her tough to work with, but she's approachable enough, if not quite warm, and even has a vein of dry humor about her.

Biography: Much as could be expected of such a fervently private individual, Izzie doesn't go around blathering all about her personal history, at least outside of what can be gleaned from the litany of bands she's played with since she moved to the United States. She grew up in the dusty seaside slums of Cartagena, Colombia, with a younger sister who in many ways was her whole world growing up and with whom she formed her first band when she was just a lanky, acne-ridden teenager. She was principally a vocalist at that point, and didn't really make any inroads into playing guitar until, at around age sixteen, personal upheaval led her to part ways with Colombia and head for America.

She settled down first in New York City, where she joined a couple of hardcore punk and thrash metal groups-- first on vocals, and then later as a guitarist. She took a hiatus from music to attend the City University of New York, where she earned her BA in history and began working towards a Master's with a specialization in European medieval and Renaissance history. Those plans were put on ice when she moved to Baltimore in 1995, and then abandoned altogether when she decided a career as a historian wasn't for her, that she preferred to make music her focus.

By then, she was already a far cry from the rough-hewn, sometimes explosively violent youth she'd been when she'd first come to NYC and gotten involved in its music scene. Still, the East Coast metal scene was pretty insular; she'd wound up with something of a reputation, and it took a while to substitute that image with the politely professional one she'd since cultivated. By the late 90s, she was once again an active musician, though it didn't take her long to realize playing second fiddle really wasn't in her character-- she wanted to be in the driver's seat.

To that end, in 2001, armed with a handful of songs she'd been working on through the preceding couple of years, she began assembling Psychosis. At first, it was kind of a revolving door-- musicians came and went, some because they had failed to live up to her astronomical expectations, some because they didn't exactly appreciate the level of creative control Izzie exerted, some just because they didn't gel well. In the last four years, blessedly, the line-up has largely stabilized around a core of her, Rick Silva on bass, and Valentina Diaz on lead guitar; Ada Rae Leveque became the band's drummer after the last one was fired for getting drunk, sexually harassing Rick, and being five minutes late to rehearsal. Izzie's still not sure which of the three annoyed her the most.

On the whole, she's satisfied with where she is in life: she's never really been the sort to want or need the company of others, preferring intellectual and creative pursuits instead. She keeps a novel by her bed each night, she likes to learn and explore new subjects, and she enjoys picking up new skills-- lately, for example, she's been teaching herself to draw. It's a quiet life (figuratively speaking), and not one she, as a rule, leaves open to others, but it's the one she's arrived at, and she's content to return to it after a long day at the studio or a couple of weeks out on tour. Heck, it's only recently that she's begun interacting with Rick outside of the studio or the stage, and he's been in the band for five years. Presumably, that's about as long as the line she draws between personal and professional is.