Confess is a sleaze-metal outfit from Stockholm, Sweden. They’ve never been afraid of orchestrations, which aren’t all that commonplace in the genre, which leads to an abundance of strings. What is really impressive is how structurally sound their work is. Vocalist John Elliot has been doing it for almost two decades now, and is never going to stop.
“If I quit music today, quit my bands, I’d probably still be writing music. It’s really effortless for me; it’s just something that I do.”
Their fourth studio album, Metalmorphosis, has been out for a couple of months, via Frontiers Music Srl. Mixed and mastered by Erik Martensson (Eclipse), this is the most ambitious album to date. Their debut offering was more punk rock, while this record hits all the notes of classic hard rock meets AOR. Elliot admits it has been a little overwhelming, though, having not released an album since 2020; he says he forgot how it feels to release a record.
“We’ve never been a band that releases an album every second year; it always takes three years for us. But this time, we started from scratch, because when COVID hit, we just released Burn ‘em All, and two weeks after the release, COVID hit. We had to cancel the whole year, and that took the spark out of us for a while. We weren’t really sure if we were going to continue as a band after that, because life changes; it changed for a lot of guys in the band. When we actually came back together after two years or so, we were in a different place.”
He never stopped writing, and appreciated the time he had away from the band, which was the first time since he was 18, but he still had that itch. He would still meet up with the guys, but as friends, which eventually spread to writing music again. Over that span, Metalmorphosis started to take shape, even with some lineup changes happening.
“As you grow older, you run out of inspiration, or life experience. I can write lyrics about changing diapers of my kids and taking them to kindergarten. On this album, we actually started to write made-up stories, from old legends.”
Highlighting their creativity is “Pursuit of the Jenny Haniver,” a tale about a historical maritime hoax, where fishermen and apothecaries in the 16th century would take dried and mummified carcasses of stingrays and turn them into monsters to sell to tourists. The main formula for the band, though, is to write bangers, with 90% of the first three records penned by Elliot. With this one, drummer Samuel Samael took a crack at it.
“He’s such a good lyric composer,” shares Elliot. “Some songs he wrote completely by himself, and some songs I started off with a verse and sent it to him. He sent back a second verse, and we did the chorus together. We kind of do it back and forth, but he’s been the main guy on this album.”
After a decade of powering through the industry, Confess is seemingly all grown up now. When they were younger, they would party all the time and revel in the excitement of touring outside of Sweden. Now, they have evolved and learned from their past, and are delivering with flying colors. Elliot hasn’t taken anything for granted.
“When you have a family, when you’re home, you need to really be home, you know. Before I had kids and stuff, you could rest a couple days, sleep on the couch, play PlayStation after a tour and recoup. Now, when I come home, I need to be there the minute I step in. I learned to make it a little easier on the road, and not be completely burned out when I come home.”
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