Kvelertak. Every Time I Die. Turbonegro. Pissed Jeans. All of these and other rock‘n‘roll meets Black Metal acts can easily be used to describe Daufødt from Oslo, Norway. Yet – would that really be fitting? A closer look might be necessary.
Anika Linn Verdal Homme is fronting the quartet from deep within Norway’s bible belt but there is no trace of any kind of conservatism here. More likely, a need for shocking the old-fashioned and left-behind shimmers through. In that sense, there is a deeper connection to Svalbard from the UK, but due to the writer’s inability to understand Norwegian which is screamed at him with full force (otherwise my Norse is fine ;-) it remains unclear whether Daufødt also puts a strong emphasis on feminism and common decency, the latter unfortunately missing from far too many people (males). By the way, if you don’t know that this is a female voice shouting your socks off, you might never know – thus this is definitely more Walls of Jericho, Arch Enemy and Svalbard.
The band plays very fast, top-notch hardcore with a lot of deathpunk elements but the mix is sometimes tinkered with in the form of small post-metal-like segments, for example in “Kulturarven”, when noisy guitars introduce the song which is broken up even further with disrupted vocoder-parts and very dissonant guitar lines which then brings the band closer to a kind of Botch-like mathcore with a twist.
When looking at pictures of the band you feel as if you look back at some punk version of 80s popsters, thus the comparison to the bands mentioned above is also lacking, this band is more Black Flag in attitude than in appearance. The fact that they seemingly know how to take a joke connects them to an act like Every Time I Die, but they never become as sardonic and self-centered as Turbonegro playing with homosexual images without clearly pointing out that they do not want to make fun of homophobic stereotypes. Daufødt is funny but not at the expense of others but at their own expense – good character trademark. Nevertheless, you do not get the notion that they don’t take their music seriously, they do, that is clear when listening to the ending of the final track “Et Eller Annet Radikalt” with its layer upon layer of feedback.
With Daufødt you get 28 minutes of good blackened hardcore, fast songs, good attitude a sense of humour and good songwriting. If you expect something else, well look for the next art-rock-band.
