The long-awaited White-Gluz sisters collaboration is finally here, blending Alissa White-Gluz’s metal screams with Jasamine White-Gluz’s dreamy atmosphere. Alissa has been doing vocals for melodic deathcore group Arch Enemy since 2014, and Jasamine began playing shoegaze as No Joy in 2009.
Alissa White-Gluz joining Arch Enemy began a new era for the band, and 2014’s War Eternal launched the next stage of their commercial success. Her other albums with the group, 2017’s Will to Power and 2019’s Covered in Blood served as fair follow-up additions to Arch Enemy’s long career, during which they’ve released 12 albums since 1996. Most recently, they went on tour with Amon Amarth in 2019. Alissa collaborating with Jasamine also comes at the start of a new era for No Joy.
Even though they’re sisters, this is the first time the two have collaborated. In a press release, Jasamine commented “I’ve never collaborated musically with my sister before. When we were kids we would sing and play music together but as we’ve both become adults and touring musicians we’ve never had a chance to work together. This is the heaviest song on this record so it felt fitting to have her on there. There is something special about her being on this album, specifically because it’s an exploration of family and motherhood.”
No Joy’s upcoming album is titled Motherhood, and due on August 21 via Joyful Noise/Hand Drawn Dracula. She’s stepping out of her comfort zone a bit on it and incorporating elements of trip hop, trance and nu-metal. It will be her first album in five years.
Jasamine was never afraid to get noisy in her previous albums, but the addition of Alissa’s screams adds an extra level of heaviness that she couldn’t reach with waves of fuzzy guitar noise alone. “Dream Rats” doesn’t use metal as a gimmick, instead opting to only use Alissa where she fits. The screaming comes in at the start, but Jasamine still has her shimmering guitar riffs to help carry the song. There’s another short metal passage near the end, but all in all it’s more dream pop than metal.
“Nothing Will Hurt” and “Birthmark,” two of the other lead singles from Motherhood, weren’t noisy at all. However, the lead single “Four,” does have some more metal influence in it. The new album’s synthesis of genres and Jasamine’s should lead to a different kind of album than the ones from the first half of the 2010s.
Photo credit: Stephen Hoffmeister
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