For Not Enough Space co-vocalists Liv Mitchell and Lizzie Raatma, extremity isn’t just a sound — it’s a lifestyle.
The duo unleash an intense barrage of bleghs and brees on Weaponize Your Rage, the debut album from their Orlando-based melodic deathcore band — but their boundary-pushing goes far beyond what they do on the mic. It manifests musically, emotionally and even physically. Case in point: In their music videos, Mitchell and Raatma don’t just scream like demons — they devour hyper-realistic organs with feral glee. And they want you to see every splatter.
That gore isn’t just for show. It’s rooted in a deep love of horror. The band are all diehard fans of old-school slashers and modern-day shockers like the Terrifier series, and few things look sicker on-screen than practical effects — whether it’s stabbing into plated hearts in their “Goth Girl Dinner” video, or a wild-eyed Raatma sinking her teeth into intestines in their viscera-slickened clip for “Devil Left Me on Read.”
“We hired a special effects artist for the video,” Mitchell recalls of the latter shoot, which finds her pig-squealing her lines while bound up by ropes and doused in fake blood. Of the guts, she continues: “We took paper towels, ran liquid latex over them, rubbed them out [to make] them look realistic, and then we put blood on them… It was fucking disgusting watching it from the background and seeing Lizzie just tear into it.”
But behind those fetid visual feasts is a band that’s deadly serious about their craft.
Since forming in 2018, Not Enough Space have shapeshifted from their earlier pop-punk leanings into a maximalist strain of metalcore — with Mitchell and Raatma leveling up their glass-shattering shrieks, sub-sonic growls and soaring melodic refrains to match. That evolution has helped turn the band into viral stars on TikTok, with their single “Primitive” — and Mitchell’s now-infamous breakdown moan — accidentally birthing the internet’s favorite new subgenre: moancore. The group’s unique approach has racked up millions of streams and likes, landed them tours with the Funeral Portrait, Dark Divine and Capstan, and fueled a mission to make each song heavier than the last.
Evan Draper
All that extremity takes a toll — especially on the voice. Without proper technique, an untrained singer’s vocal cords could take a beating over it. But offstage, Raatma and Mitchell both double as professional vocal coaches, and they’ve got their own regimen for keeping their throats in furious fighting shape. One key? You gotta eat your meat.
“Protein is so important,” Raatma explains. She and Mitchell stick to chicken and broccoli to power-load those pipes — much like how gym-rats bulk up around heavy lifts to replenish muscle mass. “You’re using a lot of muscles that you typically wouldn’t be using while talking. Increasing your protein intake … actually repairs your voice faster.”
That kind of discipline comes from years of practice. As Not Enough Space’s founding vocalist, Raatma has spent nearly a decade working on her technique. Raised in New York, she moved to Orlando for college and started hitting local open mics to belt out Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance songs. Through various “build-a-band” events and social media vocal covers, she connected online with guitarist-vocalist Anthony Martinez.
Not Enough Space’s Lizzie Raatma
Angel Pinango
Raatma and Martinez launched Not Enough Space as a Paramore-style project and played coffee shops around town. Following 2021’s self-released End This Way EP, the band leaned into a heavier, more metallic sound — with Martinez hitting screams and Raatma soaring through cleans. Eventually, Martinez left in 2022 to focus full-time on his own metalcore outfit, Dark Divine.
By then, Mitchell had been following Not Enough Space on Instagram. She also got her start posting vocal covers on socials — and her range caught Raatma’s attention. Impressed, Raatma reached out with a message that would reshape the band’s sound.
“The initial message from Lizzie was, ‘We’re looking to change up what we’re doing,’” Mitchell recalls. Having grown up on a steady diet of Myspace-era deathcore, she accepted the challenge like a pro. “I’d been singing and screaming for as long as I can remember, so I was like, ‘Fuck it, I’ll give it a shot.’”
“She was really dedicated, and she learned everything so fast,” Raatma says. After just two weeks of rehearsals, the two locked in — and they’ve been an intense, inseparable vocal tandem ever since.
Over the last year, Not Enough Space — rounded out by guitarist Tristan Kaos, bassist Jacob Sawyer and drummer Maurice Jones — have continually pushed their sound into a drastically heavier direction, and people are taking notice. Last year’s punishing “Primitive” hammers the speakers with dramatic djent riffs and seismic, Spiritbox-esque chorus hooks. But it was Mitchell’s outrageous, quivering moan into the drop that turned heads and launched memes: Just like that “moancore” was born.
“Everybody goes ape shit over the moan,” says Mitchell. “Some people are disappointed that we don’t do it live… I’m not gonna do that at all. I just won’t.” While Mitchell skips her signature cry in-concert, she says she’ll gladly pass off those duties to someone else for a laugh. “Most of the time the people we bring up for ‘Primitive’ are dudes. It makes it 10 times funnier that they get up there and do the moan.”
With all eyes on them, Not Enough Space are now entering a fiery new era with debut album Weaponize Your Rage. The dynamic release still leaves room for heart-swelling, Paramore-inspired, punky anthems (“Waiting 4 U”), but most of the record hits like a battering ram. The pummeling “Eye 4 an Eye” features a guest vocal from former member Martinez, while the dissonant deathcore heater “Devil Left Me on Read” finds Not Enough Space’s vocalists seething through violent, torturous lines inspired by the seven deadly sins.
Mitchell shouts-out Kaos — who is also her husband — with pushing their “Devil” into such beastly territory. “Tristan was like, ‘Y’all want heavy? I can give you heavy.’ Anything that’s goopy, goblin-brained and very chuggy … that’s his shit.” Fired up by the fierce framework of the arrangement, Mitchell laid down one of the album’s most ungodly moments: an ultra-extended bree that sounds like it was burbled straight from the bowels of hell.
“I want to sound like Will Ramos and Alex Terrible,” Mitchell reveals. “That is my dream, to be able to hit those lows and implement that into our music. Being able to spice it up on these last couple of songs really shows that we’ve been putting in a lot of work.”
Beyond the hellacious vocal performances and gnarly visuals, Raatma and Mitchell are also using Weaponize Your Rage to expel pent-up emotions in a positive manner. Some songs run rampant with revenge-fueled brutality — the title track strikes a more empowering note. It’s about finding your inner strength and projecting that to the rest of the world. Sometimes, you just have to scream that out loud.
“‘Weaponize Your Rage’ is about coming to that portion of your life where you realize that anger is not a weakness, it’s a strength. And you can use that to your [benefit], versus letting rage just consume you,” Mitchell explains. She adds, “A lot of our songs have very angry undertones, even some of the softer songs.”
“Liv is very in tune with how she presents her anger. I am not, but she helps me harness it,” Raatma says, reflecting on how Not Enough Space continue to push each other towards an exciting and extreme future. “Some of us are more vocal about our emotions than others — I’m more on team sad and gloomy. But the elements of this band [have] me like, ‘Let’s get angry today. I’m down!’”