If things had gone according to plan, Otep would have started its current tour with Static-X with its new CD, “The Ascension,” in stores and in the hands of many of the band’s fans.

But plans for a March release of the CD got buried in January when EMI Music announced a major reorganization that is seeing Virgin Records folded into a restructured Capitol Records.

“They decided to gut Capitol and fire everyone from the president on down to our A&Rs,” singer Otep Shamaya said. “Now it’s deciding whether or not we want to stay with the new regime or try to find another home.”

It’s obviously a frustrating situation, but things could be worse. Otep is at least playing live — including a Salt Lake City date on Wednesday at In The Venue — and Shamaya has found that even with a brief opening set that includes four songs from “The Ascension,” the band is already getting an encouraging response from fans.

“The new stuff is translating very well,” Shamaya said. “Actually, the fans are pretty familiar with it [the new CD] because we released some of it on the Internet. The ‘Ghost Flowers’ video was released first on the Internet before it was released to the video channels. And we also released [the song] ‘Confrontation’ on our MySpace page. So when we start the riff on that, when people hear the beginning, the spoken piece I do, the place just goes crazy. It’s pretty amazing and validating for us.”

And Shamaya thinks there’s a good chance the band will have a label deal and release date for “The Ascension” in place by the time the Static-X tour wraps up in June.

“The good thing about it is that there are people at the new regime who like what we do, that are supporters of what we do,” she said. “There are people at other labels that like what we do and support what we do. We’re in a good position either way.”

Still, there’s no masking the fact that Shamaya is eager to have fans hear “The Ascension” in its entirety and to be able to begin touring behind the album in earnest.

“To have this really beautiful thing that I’m so proud of just sitting in some sort of stasis is very difficult to endure on a daily basis,” Shamaya said. “But I’m very thankful to have the opportunity to be on tour right now.”

The fact that Shamaya feels passionate about “The Ascension” should come as no surprise. Two words that invariably surface when she talks about music — other observers talk about Shamaya — are passion and commitment to her art.

Shamaya began pursuing her artistic goals in the fall of 2000, when she formed the original edition of Otep. Today’s lineup also includes original bassist “eViL J.” McGuire and two recent additions, drummer Brian Wolff and guitarist Aaron Nordstrom.

From the start, the band created a particularly brutal metal sound, first on the 2001 EP, “Jihad,” and next on the 2002 full-length debut, “Sevas Tra.”

If anything, the band’s second CD, the 2005 release of “House Of Secrets,” was even more extreme, as Shamaya steered Otep in more experimental directions.

In making “The Ascension,” Shamaya said, she sought to recapture the drive and excitement she felt when “Sevas Tra” was recorded.

“That was precisely our goal, to try to rediscover the hunger that a lot of bands have on their first album and the scrutiny that is placed on it and also the self-discovery, the uniqueness of finding one’s own voice,” she said. “A lot of bands, it seems, once they are successful or seem to have found themselves, it seems like the music and the magic just dissipates a bit. Very few bands are able to continue to recreate themselves and stay within the same vein of who they were.”

At the same time, Shamaya said she wanted to retain some of the more experimental bent of “House Of Secrets.”

“With ‘House of Secrets’ I was so disgusted with the way albums were being made. It was so fabricated,” Shamaya said.

With “The Ascension,” Shamaya hopes Otep has created a CD that will please fans of both previous albums.

“I think the third album, ‘The Ascension,’ you can definitely tell it’s the offspring of those two albums, and I’m proud of that,” she said. “That was the goal. That’s what we wanted to do, combine the abstract eccentricity of ‘House Of Secrets’ with the power-groove dynamics of ‘Sevas Tra.’ I think we did that with this album.”

Otep

When: Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

Where: In The Venue, 219 S. 600 West, Salt Lake City

Also featuring: Separation of Self, Offered No Escape, and The Miranda Project

Tickets: $12 advance, $14 day of, available at Smith’s Tix locations (800-888-TIXX, www.smithstix.com)

Info: (801) 359-3219, www.inthevenue.com

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