On first listen, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Wolverhampton's God Damn - possibly the grungiest band in Britain - were spawned from some sort of rancid hell pit (no hometown jokes, please). Instead, it's the product of two ex-indie kids, Thom Edwards and Ash Weaver.
After the bass player from their prior band split, God Damn was the warped result. "[At that point] we'd had emails from major labels and we were going along doing what people were telling us to do," explains Thom. "We thought, 'Let's start a band where we just do what we want to do all of the time' - that just happened to be the heaviest fucking thing we could think of."
Gibsons, Oranges and more
A record deal followed, as will debut album, Vultures, on 11 May. We've heard it and it's imbued with stonking filthy riffs that, live, Thom conjures through his Gibson SG and a combination of a trio of Orange heads, including his 90s OTR120, 70s OR120 and a fresh-off-the-line OB1 bass head. Then there's some clever splitting, a DigiTech Whammy DT and looper, and a Way Huge Swollen Pickle involved.
"There's also a company in Scotland called Gojira FX that I should shout out," says Thom. "He's made me some crazy fuzzes. Most of the fuzzes on the album are his. He's got this crazy Mangler pedal - imagine two Fuzz Factory pedals put together. It's that insane!"
We'd say it sounds like a match made in, er, hell.
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