Biography

It's standard procedure for Lenora Khetienn, lead singer and studio guitarist for the band The Charnel House, to lead reporters off the trail with elaborate and consistently used lies, but on the rare occasion something true slips out.

Born in 1979 in Yakutsk, Siberia, Khetienn's early years have had a profound effect on the woman she's become. Her father was a strong supporter of Marxism and Communism, and was arrested in the mid-90's for supporting revolutionaries seeking to overthrow Yeltsin and return the country to its previous government. When she was eighteen, mother and daughter moved to Moscow, where Khetienn began work as a professional dominatrix and performed as a musician at clubs. Shortly after arriving, she and two others started the band The Charnel House, playing clubs and discos all over Moscow, their sound sharp and biting and a bit ahead of its time.

In the ten years that she has been in the fetish industry, she has often been photographed and asked to appear or give interviews for various fetish magazines and get-togethers, and has often made time for these appearances in between gigs and studio recordings for her band. She also worked for some time in a dungeon in New York City when the band crossed to the US, and has created an educational series entitled Fetish FAQ, a fetish video that she directed and starred in and which earned her an adult oscar two years ago.

Despite being primarily based in Europe, The Charnel House has been gaining an underground cult following in the states, and have performed on the main stage for Ozzfest on numerous occasions, most recently the summer of '08. Though Khetienn is recently retired from her work as a pro-domme, she has announced she will continue to promote the fetish industry through workshops, classes, and further videos, though she is primarily concentrating on her musical, writing, and acting careers now.

Khetienn gained a level of national interest when she agreed to appear on Season Two of Celebreality, creating a window into her life as a fetishist and pro-domme, using the spot in the show to try to create a platform to speak out against incorrect stereotypes or presumptions about the fetish and bdsm worlds.