Liv Sin is both a band and the rock’n’roll alias of Liv Jagrell. She is most known as the lead singer for Swedish metal band Sister Sin. They fell apart at the end of 2015 when key members resigned one by one due to burn-out, but Liv was determined to keep singing and promptly put together her own band.
Liv Sin was not a band created to forge ahead in a new direction – Liv was more than happy to keep the Sister Sin sound alive. I can’t imagine that anyone had a problem with that, but it would also take a little time for things to gel.
The first album Follow Me (2017) was a decent start. The sound, the performances, and the attitude is there. We’re still talking Sister Sin music. The songwriting was still developing, and perhaps one should not expect what basically is a new band to immediately get to the levels Sister Sin were at when they stopped. The album is definitely on par with early Sister Sin efforts, which is a more fair expectation. I was thrilled to see Liv forge on.
The second album Burning Sermons arrived in 2019, and now we’re talking! This is a clear and solid step forward. You can hear that the band has gelled from all their hard work on the road. Also, the material is taking several steps forward. It is also a more varied album than Follow Me with solid rockers, more melodic segments, more variation within each song. While I fully expected the second album to be better, I could not have hoped for as much as this.
In a YouTube interview about her lyrics, Liv recently spoke about being inspired from “everyday life, things from the world of politics, and things that happen to me in real life. For example, Slave To the Machine is about how we get controlled by the people in authority. We get so into our own devices that we can’t think for ourselves any more. They give us what they want us to see.”
Slave To the Machine is indeed one of the stand-out tracks on the album, and Liv certainly paints a warning with big letters here:
Don’t think you’re in control
‘Cause they own your life, they own your soul
The song leaves a lot of space in the verses for the sinister mood to creep through, and plays with abrupt pauses and solid bombast in the choruses.
A whimsical symphony opens another highlight in Hope Begins To Fade, which features the imposing vocals of Björn Strid (known from The Night Flight Orchestra).
The album’s ballad Ghost In the Dark contains even darker subject matter. Liv said, “Ghost In the Dark is about anxiety and depression. I know a lot of people with mental issues and illness, which I believe we will see more of in this world as modern life is so stressed, and social media and always being connected contributes to that stress. So it’s about that feeling of something coming at you unexpectedly like a ghost that comes in the dark, or at any time when you’re lonely or vulnerable. Sometimes we can control it, other times not.”
Jagrell’s lyrics are important to her and she spends quite some time getting them right. Liv says, “My lyrics are always something that I want to say to the world, or share, that I feel is important. I would not write a lyric about going out, partying or drinking beer, because I don’t think that is very important. *laughs* So for me, I have to write something that really means something. I hope as an artist to inspire people or make them think. It’s my vocation to use my time or use my lyrics to get something good out and make people think. That’s what I think, at least. But it’s good that we have the other types of bands too, of course!”
As 2019 came to a close, we got the news that Liv Sin had been put on indefinite hiatus as Sister Sin had decided to reform. This is obviously amazing news for fans of the Sisters, but it also says something about the quality that Liv Sin had gotten to that it is now sad to see them stop.
Hopefully this leaves Liv with a viable side project to get back to whenever Sister Sin is inactive in the future, but if this really is it for them, Burning Sermons is one heck of an album to end on.
Facebook Comments