It’s said that the best friends make you a better version of yourself: they challenge you, encourage you, and help your better qualities shine. If that concept is prompting some personal reflection…well, I’ll leave that to you. But the idea also, arguably, applies to music. The best splits and collabs celebrate the best traits of all bands involved.
LØVEGOD, the new split from German heavyweights Love•Love•Love and Ølgod, proves the better-together principle. The former’s rollicking post-hardcore/noise rock collides with the caustic doom/sludge of the latter for a celebration of all things reverb and abrasion.
Love•Love•Love opens the album with muscular, in-your-face rippers engineered to start mosh pits. Walking a narrow tightrope between energizing groove and cutting harshness, it’s hard to sit still while listening to their bruising bops. In contrast to their friendly-sounding name, Love•Love•Love feels like they’re trying to start a fight…and having the time of their lives doing so.
Ølgod picks up the caustic challenge laid down by Love•Love•Love and respond with devastatingly heavy grooves. The fighting intensity established in the first half of LØVEGOD is channeled into slow-burning anthems of despair, stretched and blown out into wallowing pits of misery. The core sound of the album doesn’t falter, but the delivery fundamentally alters the mood. Fans of noisy, scalding grooves will find themselves delighting in the contrasting points-of-view unveiled by both Love•Love•Love and Ølgod.
Interestingly, both bands make good use of clean(ish) vocals that cut through rough-and-tumble riffs with mesmerizing clarity, adding a haunting layer to bludgeoning, crushing tracks. The emotion conveyed, however, shifts between the two sides: Love•Love•Love delivers a fervent, almost manic high while Ølgod reaches a plaintive, searing low. Strikingly similar methods with startlingly different results. Friends that make each other better by turning up the intensity of their best traits.
LØVEGOD will be released tomorrow via Electric Valley Records. Pre-order here and prepare yourself for grrrrroooooves. Listen to the full album below.
Follow Love•Love•Love and Ølgod on Bandcamp.