ODCULT
If Satan possessed your favourite 70s rock band and gave them a hellacious 2018 makeover, you’d be some way to understanding these Swedes’ persuasive power
veterans of countless
punk, hardcore and stoner rock bands in Ljungby, Sweden, singer/guitarist Coffe Fransson and his friends reached a moment of revelation in 2013. They quit their bands, joined forces and directed their creative urges towards the primal essence of heaviness. The result is Odcult: a psych rock powerhouse with some of the most absurdly infectious riffs we’ve heard in months. Such is the earthy oomph of new, second album Into The Earth, it’s almost as if the trio have been beamed here from the early 70s…
“It’s because we are time-travellers, ha ha! We just thought, ‘Fuck it, we’ll go to the future and make it happen…’” laughs Coffe. “The truth is that we all just fell in love with Sabbath. They’re always there, even in the punk scene, so we always loved that sound. But it all began with dad’s record collection. He had a lot of Kiss records! When we started making music, you think, ‘That’s dad’s music, so let’s play hardcore instead…’ but then we realised, ‘This shit is good!’ Music in the 70s had more soul. It was new and raw and dangerous and scary.”
From their occult rock imagery to the hellish overtones of Coffe’s lyrics, Odcult are operating in a similar sonic area to their fellow countrymen, but Into The Earth is not a recruitment tool for the dark side, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise. It’s a high-energy exercise in exorcising demons and channelling rage through malevolent metaphor.
“Yeah, I sing a lot about Lucifer, Hell and purgatory,” Coffe smiles. “I love theology and the occult and that whole mystique, so I used the occult theme and fallen angels as a metaphor for how I perceived situations in my life. Sometimes lyrics are like scar tissue. Something happens and I put it down on paper. That’s my way of processing everything, so when I feel like I fucking hate a person, and that happens quite often, something forms in my mind and I use Satanic imagery to express that.”
Drawing parallels between Satan’s mythological powers and acts of evil in the real world is not a new idea, but Odcult do it with such gleeful, explosive vigour that the songs on Into The Earth make succumbing to nefarious forces sound like an absolutely brilliant idea.
“I see me and my friends as the fallen angels,” Coffe notes. “It sounds cheesy, but every punk rocker or metalhead feels like they’re segregated from society to some degree, so maybe there is a direct connection to the Satanic side of things. I’m not a Satanist, though… but we do love Satan, ha ha!”
Gearing up for extensive touring across Europe this autumn, Odcult are hoping to reap the rewards of their own unerring passion for giant riffs and balls-out rocking. They may not be fully paid-up members of Lucifer’s legions, but they’re certainly raising Hell.
“It blows our minds that three guys in a basement in Sweden can reach people all over the world with our music. We just wanted to play something full of energy, something that came from the heart. We wanted to play rock’n’roll and somehow it just happened, so we want to push this as hard as we can.”