God Damn

Description

God Damn are back with their self-titled third album! The lauded band recorded the album live over just a few days with legendary producer Sylvia Massy (System of a Down, Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones, Johnny Cash, REM, Slayer, Babes In Toyland, Tool), even taking to a disused tube station to record certain parts. We needed that booming, reverberant drum sound with lots of decay. We recorded in Aldwych station, known for the storage of priceless art during wartime and the setting of the Prodigys Firestarter music video, the group notes.

The recording process saw God Damn experiment with countless microphone configurations, an amp in a Victorian oven, a fuzz pedal made from a lightbulb, someone moving a mic around the live room whilst recording (the human phaser effect), attaching a garden hosepipe to a mic to record drums, and much more that some would deem outlandish. Indeed, the album treads new ground in more ways than just sonically, a deeply personal recurring theme throughout refers to the bands sabbatical due to mental health problems, sleep deprivation and Thomas Edwards journey raising his autistic son. If you look at the footage of the album sessions, its clear I had a problem with strong painkillers, he explains.

Lead single Dreamers opens the album with a visceral explosion of dense, chunky guitars and Edwards signature croon rips through the center. This song is a foretelling of what will follow on the rest of the record. The themes are societal, the guitars are tuned right down to the first letter, he says. Following on, High Frequency Words is reminiscent of The Eighties Matchbox B-line Disaster, it bolts the listener into submission, possessing all the power of a heavy rock classic but encased within a pop framework. This has always been God Damns charm, but on album three their unique magnetism and flair is well and truly honed. They are a band that have come into their own, writing and releasing on their own terms and without submitting to expectation.