Swedish power duo Molosser Crude’s new song, “War Horse”, is a picture of the battlefield, seen through the eyes of the most innocent victim of human violence. We follow its pace through a weary, determined march to the site, a first skirmish, then a temporary lull before the full chaos of battle ensues. After this: desolation, ashes, death.
Like a war horse, ripped of its will
We live in dark times. Madmen have been placed to rule the Earth, and where there is no open conflict, the threat is never far away. Values like solidarity and kindness are being put aside for the benefit of what is perceived as personal gain, but in reality, is only a swift rotting of the soul. There are no real winners here.
I’m pushing forward until my worth is spilled
”War Horse” can be seen as a commentary on this. But there is not only resignation in the darkness. There is power, too. In ”War Horse,” monotony gives place to violent eruption, a war cry against the oppression of our fellow creatures, our fellow human beings, ourselves.
I am Chaos
Of course, there are other layers to the lyrics and the music as well. “War Horse” is a masterpiece of the monotone, a detonation of dynamics. As always, drummer/singer Tess and guitarist Jahn are working the minimal to the max, coaxing an eternity of expression from an insistent drone and a few simple chords. And, of course, Tess’ brutally beautiful vocals. Power and beauty. Determination and drive. Like a war horse.
I am distortion
We will not even try to place this track in a genre other than a very wide ”rock” spectrum. Tess and Jahn pull their music up from a deep well of influences where stoner rock is mingled with old blues, noise with soul, doom with modal jazz – but the brew they make out of them is all their own.
”War Horse” is the fourth and final single leading up to Molosser Crude’s debut album, originally planned to be released in May 2025 but delayed due to interesting circumstances. More about this later.
About Molosser Crude
Molosser Crude is a Swedish power duo consisting of Tess on drums and vocals and Jahn on guitar. The foundation is a hard-riffing bedrock of stoner rock, grunge, and noise rock coupled with a strong element of gritty blues, but there’s more to the picture. Amid all the roughness, there’s a swinging sensibility that stems from soul and jazz, perhaps most evident in Tess’ effortlessly cool vocals, but also in her dynamic drumming and in Jahn’s guitar playing, where his parallel background as a freeform jazz saxophonist sometimes shines through. All this gives the music an organic flow that has more to do with sixties rock, far from click tracks and pitch correction, than the slick productions of later days.
The music is all about maximizing the minimal, doing everything at once, and exploiting the dynamic possibilities of a tight-knit unit of just two people. Add to this excellent songwriting, and you get some really interesting results.
Molosser Crude started out as a side project of the acoustic guitar duo Molosser, where Tess and Jahn had explored the possibilities of making riff-based music on two downtuned acoustic guitars, but soon took over as the main project. Molosser Crude’s first batch of singles were all live-in-the-studio recordings, where everything was recorded in one take, including the vocals, and Jahn played the guitar through two guitar amplifiers and one bass amp, thus creating a full band sound despite the duo format.
Starting January 2025, Molosser Crude are releasing new material recorded in a more ”normal” way, but where one continuous take of drums and guitar playing together form the base for vocals and guitar overdubs. Still no bass guitar; the low end is managed by the bass amp channel of the primary recording. Four singles are planned, leading up to an album release in May 2025.
As a live band, Molosser Crude is overwhelming despite the small format. Tess bashes away at her drums like a furious, modern-day Keith Moon, and Jahn delivers a wide spectrum of sounds via his three amps, doing bass, rhythm, and solo duties all at once. But again, excessive power is not everything; Crude uses the possibility of going from a whisper to a scream in a way that might be harder with a bigger group. A hint of Molosser Crude’s live presence can be gleaned from the videos from Opeth singer David Isberg’s Doom New Year, where Crude played in 2023 – but mind you, sound and picture quality are crappy, and the recordings are dated – during the past year, fast-evolving Molosser Crude have grown tighter, bolder, better and more explosive, so the only chance to experience the full impact of a Molosser Crude gig is to see them first hand.
Tess and Jahn share life outside as well as inside the music, and after living at a small farm in rural Småland – where both the Molosser and Molosser Crude projects took shape – for several years, they spent most of 2024 relocating to Fjärås on the West coast, a stone’s throw from Gothenburg where they originally met. This was a very time-consuming project, so rather than trying to fit in half-assed gigging and releases, Crude concentrated on rehearsing and writing new material. This work is now bearing fruit in the form of the forthcoming album in May 2025, and after that, there’s first-class material left for another album, soon to follow. So beware – for Molosser Crude, the time of silence is over. From a whisper to a scream, all at once.
SOURCE: Official Bio
LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/molosser_crude
https://www.facebook.com/0Molosser0/
https://molossercrude.bandcamp.com/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4QzPy1BLjfBaXLW9msJqxQ
https://www.youtube.com/@evilear