Let’s face it: the heavy music scene is a massive sausagefest. I do have to acknowledge that the crowds have diversified quite a bit over these past twenty years that I’ve been going to shows, but the people on stage are still for the most part men, which tends to be more and more true the heavier, and therefore more niche, the genre is. But quite recently I went to a show where I was pleasantly surprised by the opposite and I ended up discovering quite a few interesting bands, one of which I have the pleasure of writing about today. Godmorgon are a fairly new band and their debut album, the name of which sums up the quartet’s raison d’être and driving force: Out Of Spite!
Musically, the band moves somewhere between hardcore and death metal, with the drums taking the rhythmic inspiration from the former and the guitar riffs leaning more towards the death metal side of things. At no point during these twenty-six minutes the wheel is being reinvented, but the result is constantly engaging and genuinely makes you want to move around, the entire instrumentals of Rose, is a perfect example of the band’s sound. It is also worth mentioning that the entire album was recorded in pure DIY-fashion and the result is not only fitting the genre but also objectively enjoyable.
In several of my past reviews I have made it clear that I don’t subscribe to the term “female-fronted” as a musical genre and I try to avoid pointing towards the gender of any of the members, because it deters from the essential part: the music. However, it is definitely refreshing to get a different take on more extreme musical genres, be it from a lyrical or vocal performance point of view. For example, you can only hear Cannibal Corpse‘s Corpsegrinder sing about (sexual) mutilation so often before it gets old…but hearing a woman sing about breaking a glass in a sleazy guy’s asshole and torturing him is a welcome change.
All joking aside: the singer’s screams are for the most part in the higher register and she manages to deliver a performance that is a mix between evil possession and pure despair. I think my favorite example of this would be the chorus of Can’t Stop Me, which gave me goosebumps when I first heard it live. Another positive aspect of her performance is the very clear enunciation, which makes the lyrics very easy to understand. The latter are, hopefully, not all based on personal experience but deal with aspects that many women are faced with on a regular basis and also provide, shall we say, solutions to some of those issues.
All in all, Out Of Spite is a very solid first record that should appeal to fans of both genres I mentioned above alike, or simply function as a gateway to a very vast library of other bands in those genres. Godmorgon managed to capture my attention every single time I put on these ten songs and I strongly recommend giving them a listen below. For more information, you can head to their Facebook page and be sure to check out the album on April 13th!