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| Normandie: Anton Franzon, Philip Strand, and Håkan Almbladh 📷 - Lucas Englund |
Normandie is a modern alternative rock band from Örebro/Stockholm and is a fairly well-kept national secret. They started out as a quartet but has since then downscaled to a bassless trio on their latest album.
Since it's also the National Day of Sweden today (June 6th), I figured it was the perfect time to cover this band!
Getting Namedropped on Superstore
Of all places, the first time I ever heard of the band Normandie was in the US comedy show Superstore, which is kind of like The Office set in a department store environment. In the episode, the District Manager Jeff Sutton; a suit-wearing balding guy in his fifties, namedrops Normandie and the song Babylon more specifically, to seem young and hip amongst his younger co-workers.
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| Jeff Sutton in Superstore is a big fan of Normandie. |
The Song That Nearly Ruined It for Me
Out of sheer curiosity, I took a brief listen to the aforementioned song Babylon on YouTube right away. Fast forward a few days, and the song appeared to me once again, in one of the playlists I follow on Spotify. I was clearly meant to hear this one!
I found the song to have a modern pop sound to it. Not only in terms of vocal style, where the singing sometimes goes into a Justin Timberlake falsetto, but also from the voice modulation used on those Mmm-mmm-mmm's appearing in the intro and throughout the track. Hence, my initial impression was that the song by and large sounded like millennial pop with guitars, mostly due to the vocal production on this track. So at a first glance, I discarded it and didn't give the band another chance for a while.
New Age of Alternative Rock
Luckily I eventually listened to more of their music and found that I had been a bit too critical in my first impression, and their songs were really starting to grow on me. Like on Babylon, a lot of their songs feature digital effects of some sort, with modulated voice fills, digital drums or synth fills to make it more interesting. While I don't mind electronic and synth music in general, I'm quite militant when it comes to voice modulation in terms of pitch-shifting (those baby-like voices used in certain pop music particularly make my skin crawl). And while it's fortunately not that bad in Normandie's music, it's still evident the band are kids of their time and the songs wouldn't have sounded the way they do, had they been produced ten or twenty years ago. It's good to see modernisation happen in the genre, however, and Normandie really represents the new school of alternative rock.
Electronics aside, when they bring the heavy drop-tuned riffs and the singer goes into emotional screams, similar to Christopher Hall of Stabbing Westward, I feel right at home. A good example being Holy Water off the latest album. And in a way, the two bands have quite a bit in common, both in terms of dealing with darker moods and themes, but also with the inclusion of electronic elements, albeit being twenty or so years apart. Unlike Stabbing Westward, I wouldn't call Normandie an industrial band, though. I do however see Normandie being labelled as metalcore in some places, but I'm not too sure of the accuracy of that.
The 2016 debut Inguz is arguably the heaviest of the three albums released so far. It also has a more barebones rock/metal sound with the least use of electronics, so I can imagine it resonating well with fans of more traditional heavy music.
Holy Water - Live Session
Apart from regular music videos, Normandie also makes a lot of live session videos. The band sounds really tight here and in some cases, they arguably even best the studio versions!
Only Drums and Guitar
The former bassist of Normandie apparently left in late 2019, and the band currently works as a three-piece, consisting of singer Philip Strand, drummer Anton Franzon, and guitarist Håkan Almbladh. The latest album Dark & Beautiful Secrets that landed earlier this year (as in 2021), was the band's first effort without their fourth member. They managed to work around these limitations very well, though, and I suppose the digital instrumentation might have helped to complete the soundscape to an even greater extent now. The use of electronics is nothing new to the band, however, as the band was already incorporating them when they were a quartet.
Album Releases
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| Dark & Beautiful Secrets (2021) US | CA | UK | DE/EU |
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| White Flag (2019) US | CA | UK | DE/EU |
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| INGUZ (2016) US | CA | UK | DE/EU |
Videos
Hostage
From the 2021 album
Dark & Beautiful Secrets
Great looking video!
White Flag
From the 2019 album White Flag
Collide
From the 2016 album INGUZ
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