I discovered God Mother at the tail end of 2015, after my “best of” lists had been finalized and set forever in stone on Facebook, from someone else’s “best of” list on Facebook. It happens every year; I’ve just accepted that I can’t listen to everything, and that the reason we compile “best of” lists in the first place is to help each other out. But it stung a bit more than usual with Maktbehov, because it’s a damn fine album that brings Cursed, Converge, and Skitsystem together in a bilious hardcore orgy for a glorious half-hour. It would have destroyed my rankings in a second had I known about it prior to making my list. On the strength of that album alone, God Mother were worth more attention than they were getting, but the spotlight is on them now in a way I don’t think anyone--even the band--expected, with Ben Weinman naming them their successors. But let’s forget, for a moment, that The Dillinger Escape Plan endorsed God Mother in this way and consider their new album, Vilseledd, on its own merits. With only two full-lengths under their belt now, we owe God Mother that much. Vilseledd possesses every tool in the hardcore box and knows how to use them all: Max Lindström’s guitarwork is alternately chunky and razor-sharp, agile without becoming spastic and thunderous without resorting to (excessive) chuggery. They weave in and out of Michael Dahlström’s drumwork, which provides structure without restricting itself to pure backbone--he’ll spend a few bars setting the pace and then zig off into a string of blasts and unexpected fills before zagging back for one of the album’s thrilling beatdown/two-step sections, and then veer back off. He’s a hugely entertaining force in the band, anchored by the throb of Daniel Noring’s loud, dirty basslines, the true gravitational pull at the center of God Mother’s frenetic orbits. And, of course, Sebastian Campbell is a hell of a frontman, his voice leaping in and out of the music with the unbridled gusto of Greg Puciato clambering up a stack of amps. The only time they waste on Vilseledd is the thirty-second introduction “Dödfödd” (“Stillborn” in Swedish), which is immediately succeeded by back-to-back heavy-hitters “By the Millions” and “Tar Mirror.” At a minute and fifteen seconds in length, “By the Millions” is a mission statement of a single that bristles with off-kilter riffing and Campbell’s hellish screech. The formula continues on “Tar Mirror,” although the song is a little more “subdued”: the band take a moment to introduce themselves one instrument at a time, from ominous drumbeat to muddy bassline to wheedling guitar. It accumulates intensity right up until its unnervingly quiet denouement, but this is the last peace we get on Vilseledd: “No Return” is a slippery slope into the crusty fangs of “Acrid Teeth” through “10.000 Ar,” a spit-flecked run of songs not dissimilar from the first half of Converge’s You Fail Me in sheer, feral intensity. “Caved In” brings it to a hard stop and inverts the band’s sound to unexpected effect, opening on what sounds like a lost piece of New York hardcore history before cranking down the tempo for the most vicious beatdown this side of Cursed III. It’s a doozy. “Enkla Svar,” “Charlatan,” and “Carve Them” dig up God Mother’s background in crust and dark Swedish hardcore, a trilogy that totals up to approximately five minutes of God Mother at their most unrestrained. The phantasmagoric march of “Burdenless,” when it comes lumbering in, feels necessary and earned after such a blitzkrieg, rounding the album out on a satisfying note. Regardless of what Weinman intended by “Torch officially passed!,” plenty of fans are going to take the gesture at face value and come into God Mother with certain expectations the band may not be equipped to meet. The creative fire he references is unquestionably there, seeming to glow right through the cover artwork, but don’t expect Miss Machine or some revolutionary masterwork. Vilseledd is a great record full of mean, toothy songs, clever songwriting, and energetic musicianship that will make it onto a lot of “best of” lists this December, but it’s not going to upend hardcore so much as it will draw attention to the fact that there are still plenty of awesome directions it can be taken. Give God Mother the time, and I think they’ll be leading the way before long. -Brian L.
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