GNOD are lining up a new album for release via Rocket Recordings.
Due out in November, La Mort Du Sens comes three years on from the band’s last solo studio album, Chapel Perilous, which was also released by Rocket Recordings. The band also teamed up with João Pais Filipe on last year’s Faca De Fogo. Alongside news of the new album, the band have shared a video for lead track ‘Pink Champagne Blues’, which premieres via tQ above.
La Mort Du Sens roughly translates as "The Death Of Meaning," and GNOD’s Paddy Shine says this title "sums [the album] up well because [it] was coming together at a time when confusion
was king for us all – still is. I think we can all relate to that. This record is a really strange beast because of the big change that happened between mixing and recording. I think the title really does sum up the vibe of, ‘What the fuck?’ Maybe we
should have called it that!"
Shine continues: "It’s the first album in a while where we kept it in-house and DIY, and we wanted it to be as ferocious as our live sets have become. We banged it all down live – two drummers and a load of cabs in a room pushing each other forward." For more on the album, we spoke with GNOD’s Paddy Shine and Chris Haslam, which you can read below.
Rocket Recordings will release La Mort Du Sens on November 5, 2021.
Can you talk us through how you collectively settled on the album’s title?
Paddy Shine: It just arrived in my head one day and that was it really. I don’t even speak French!
Paddy says this is the first album in a while where you’ve settled on keeping the general production process in-house and as DIY as possible. Was there a particular reason for why you decided you wanted to do that with this record?
PS: The main reason was to get our live sound engineer Raikes into his natural environment and see what we could come up with. We had two tracks going into the recording and wrote the rest on the fly. Doing it ourselves was a bit less time/money pressure I guess.
Chris Haslam: It’s the first album we have done all ‘in-house’ since we did Infinity Machines. We like the idea of doing as much as we can ourselves. It helps us develop more skills along the way and usually works out a lot cheaper for us to do things that way.
You initially recorded the tracks in late 2019, which was of course pre-lockdown, before returning to nail down the mixing process sometime after when we were in the midst of COVID-19 and lockdown. Could you identify particular ways that sharp change in general societal living between the two times affected what eventually became the finished article?
PS: It dragged on a bit. We would normally have an album recorded and mixed in a short amount of time. This stretched out over a year and different GNOD bods had a say in certain final mixes which was interesting, but obviously lockdown nonsense wasn’t ideal for the process. I’d say it affected the vibe/lyrical content of certain tracks too but how I couldn’t really tell you now because we have already recorded another album since and we’ve moved forward. It’s a really decent heavy GNOD record and Raikes did a sterling job. We just wish it could’ve come out sooner than it is. Hey ho.
CH: It was difficult at first because we wanted to be in the studio mixing it together but that couldn’t happen, so the mixing sessions were done as and when possible, mostly just me and Raikes. I had to make a few difficult decisions during the process which would have been a lot easier to make if the rest of the band were in the room but there you go. I ran with how I saw it and hope everyone is happy with the result, although you can’t please everyone all the time.
By the end of the mixing, I was relieved that it sounds like a strong coherent record as there were a few times I began to lose faith in it completely. Then there’s the pressing plant queues which added more time to the eventual release date! I’m just glad that it’ll finally be out. It feels like a very long time has passed since we were in that rehearsal room playing that material which feels unusual to a band like us who are used to turning things out in a few days.
