CRUCIFIED BARBARA – In Distortion We Trust

In Distortion We Trust is the debut release from Crucified Barbara, a four-woman band from Stockholm, Sweden. The album is twelve tracks long and is a multimedia disc as well, featuring three music videos.

Crucified Barbara has drawn comparisons to bands like Motörhead for their rough, raw-edged Rock ‘n’ Roll sound, noisy riffs that get in your face and stay there, and surly attitudes. Crucified Barbara might not be as loud and crude as Lemmy and company (although they’re much better-looking), but they earn top marks for effort, and they pay tribute to their heroes by closing the album with a cover of the Motörhead classic “Killed By Death.”

Clocking in at a little over 42 minutes, In Distortion We Trust isn’t a fancy album that will blow you away with its musical brilliance. The musicianship is solidly workmanlike and rough around the edges, and the vocals of Mia Coldheart (who also handles lead guitar) are strong, having power but not a whole lot of subtlety. Most of the songs have shouted-out “gang” choruses and refrains too, making them fun to sing along with. Still, this is a hardly a “technical” album.

Something else that In Distortion We Trust has in abundance is riffs; lots of them. Heavy, neck-snapping riffs. Nearly every song has a really good chugging riff, and when you combine that with the band’s heavy rhythm section, aggressive lyrical content (often spiced up with cuss words) and Coldheart’s delivery of said content, you have an album that’s a fun listen. Crucified Barbara also has an infectious bad attitude that will rub off on you after a while, with their songs about drunkenness, motorcycles, debauchery, lewd behavior, violence, loud guitars, and how great they are. If you don’t like it, “you don’t have to stay,” as the chorus of the album’s title song helpfully suggests.

Don’t expect a ballad about love gone wrong on this album either; Crucified Barbara comes across like the sort of women who wouldn’t pine for a lost love while eating buckets of ice cream, but would instead go over to the ex-lover’s house and machine gun the place … and then torch his car … and then write a song about it! That’s just the sort of band Crucified Barbara is.

In Distortion We Trust is a brash, confident debut for Crucified Barbara, and should please fans of noisy, aggressive Rock ‘n’ Roll.