By rights, Nova Twins’ technicolour 2020 debut, Who Are The Girls?, should have transformed them into modern-day rock superstars. With their exhilarating blend of Day-Glo punk, gnarly bass, metal and electronic euphoria, guitarist and vocalist Amy Love and bassist Georgia South seized the zeitgeist, smashing boundaries and preconceptions of what rock music should be.
Given the pandemic scuppered some of the momentum that record deserved, second album Supernova should be their moment, blowing everything that makes the duo so special up to widescreen proportions. Written almost entirely during lockdown, it’s laced with darkness and triumph, more a celebration of freedom than a ‘pandemic’ record, rippling with stir-crazy, combustive energy. Musically, too, it’s a tech-head’s dream, heavily indebted to the bone-shaking techno of The Prodigy. But without a single synth in the studio, the Twins manage to hotwire an array of electronic, buzzsaw effects from their bass and guitar. Any of these tracks could be a single. Thrilling opener Antagonist hits like a primordial punch to the gut, its garish riffs fizzing with life, K.M.B is a playful tongue-in-cheek gothic murder-rap, while Fire And Ice and Choose Your Fighter captures the raw energy of their incendiary shows.
Increasingly, fans are craving bands who have something to say, and Supernova’s statements of revolution and empowerment loom large. Cleopatra, written at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, rallies for unification, a call for POC to unapologetically claim their place within heavy music: ‘When I was a kid they always called me a freak / And now them little bitches want to look like me’. Later, Puzzles is an empowering metal take on an r’nb boner jam that flips misogyny on its head. Inspirational, innovative and genuinely capable of moving the genre forward, Nova Twins are spearheading the move towards a more inclusive scene and a future that’s very bright indeed.
