THE GREAT DISCORD
SOUNDS LIKE:
Someone’s tuned the radio into a proggy, heavy, darker dimension
FOR FANS OF:
Soen, Haken, Ghost
LISTEN TO:
Omen
In a world
where bands are still referred to as ‘female-fronted’ like it’s a genre, Swedish prog metallers The Great Discord decided to create an androgynous character to head up their music. Singer Sofia Kempe paints her face in white make-up and dons black contact lenses to transform herself into said entity, named Fia. The effect is disarming.
“as a woman in metal, it’s common that you should either have a corset, be singing opera, and just play on being ‘feminine’ – or just act like men. We didn’t want that,” she explains. “We wanted people to focus on the performance. Fia is just a simple human lost in the darkness of the world.”
Debut album Duende saw Fia embodying 10 different aspects of the human psyche – one for each song – while new album The Rabbit Hole is a concept record based on a warped version of alice In Wonderland. Fia is lured down a rabbit hole to meet another androgynous being called Ire, which symbolises the darker side of human nature.
“It’s the personification of everything that’s the colour red,” she explains. “We have passion, we have wrath, we have anger, we have love – all the emotions that are really powerful. and Ire is an evil motherfucker!”
Influenced by 80s prog bands alongside the likes of Slipknot, Gojira and The Dillinger Escape Plan, Fia’s also penned a storybook to go alongside the album and has christened their music “progressive death pop”. Periphery’s mark Holcombe guests on Omen, adding a layer of drama to its soaring atmospheric harmonies. The Great Discord have also toured with metal’s most theatrical proposition, Ghost, and Fia provided vocals for Eurythmics cover Missionary Man and Imperiet’s Bible on the Popestar EP.
Like Papa, Fia enjoys fucking with people through her art. In the video for Red Rabbit, Ire writhes around like a dominatrix at a twisted tea party, showing the ‘rabbits’ around her – her bandmates – who’s boss. The most memorable moment is when she dips a tampon into a bloody cup as if it’s a tea bag, and dangles it into her mouth with gleeful abandon. She might be representing a gender-fluid persona, but she also seems to be making a political point about the visceral reality of being female.
“The whole tampon thing was basically for fun and giggles, to make people raise their eyebrows!” Fia laughs. “I guess that is one of the few things about being a woman that is hush-hush – you don’t want to talk about it, and you don’t want to see it. It’s a subject that’s really taboo, and that’s why we wanted to show off this Ire persona in the most vulgar way we could without being censored. It does not give a shit about anything.”
You can see their carnival of the bizarre when they play Damnation festival in November. Expect a performance madder than a hatter eating a box of frogs… and perhaps a little blood.
THE RABBIT HOLE IS OUT NOW VIA THE SIGN RECORDS
“TAMPONS ARE TABOO… SO
WE GOT VULGAR WITH ONE”