Thundermother

Sweden's Thundermother delivers a hard-charging brand of rock that draws primary influence from AC/DC and Motörhead while injecting a contemporary edge, evident on the widely praised Heat Wave (2020) and Black & Gold (2022).

Filippa Nässil conceived the project in Sweden, launching it in 2010 once she relocated to Stockholm with the goal of forming a classic-rock outfit. She joined forces there with Italian guitarist Giorgia Carteri, and the pair gradually assembled a lineup that stabilized in 2013 around drummer Tilda Stenqvist, bassist Linda Ström, and Irish vocalist Clare Cunningham. The completed five-piece began touring Sweden and promoting their updated take on 1970s rock, releasing the debut album Rock 'n' Roll Disaster in 2014. They followed it the next year with Road Fever, which helped establish them as fixtures on the European festival and club circuit. Recording for a third album triggered a split that saw Carteri, Stenqvist, Ström, and Cunningham depart.

Nässil rebuilt the band as a quartet by enlisting vocalist Guernica Mancini, drummer Emlee Johansson, and bassist Sara Pettersson, then returned to the studio for the self-titled album that surfaced in 2018 and retained the group's core classic-rock approach. Renewed touring across European festivals and venues filled 2019, after which the members reconvened to cut their fourth record. Although Nässil had handled most songwriting previously, the entire group collaborated on Heat Wave, tracked with Danish producer Soren Andersen at Melody studios in Copenhagen. The track "Driving in Style" preceded the AFM release in mid-2020. Two years afterward the band issued the high-energy Black & Gold, highlighted by the single "I Don't Know You."