Fan-filmed video footage of GIRLSCHOOL’s November 24 performance at Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt, Germany during the band’s European tour as the support act for MOTÖRHEAD and SAXON can be seen below.
GIRLSCHOOL’s 13th studio album, “Guilty As Sin”, was released on November 13 in North America via UDR Music in red colored vinyl, digital download and a deluxe ecolbook formats.
Produced by Chris Tsangarides (JUDAS PRIEST, THIN LIZZY) at the Ecology Room Studios in Kent, England, “Guilty As Sin” includes ten tracks of the driven, melodic yet gloriously riff-heavy rock’n’roll that Kim McAuliffe (vocals and guitar), Enid Williams (vocals and bass), Jackie Chambers (lead guitar and backing vocals) and Denise Dufort (drums) are world famous for.
Featuring raw, energetic, killer cuts such as “Take It Like A Band”, “Treasure” and “Come The Revolution”, “Guilty As Sin” is soaked in the late-night spills ‘n’ sweat of beer, cigarettes, denim and leather — a timeless evocation of how it feels to throw away all life’s B.S. and get down’n’dirty with loud, crunchy yet catchy rock ‘n’ roll. There’s also time for two storming cover songs (including the superb, swaggering rock version of THE BEE GEES‘ ’70s disco classic “Stayin’ Alive”).
Speaking to rock journalist Mitch Lafon about the songwriting process for “Guilty As Sin”, Williams said: “There are three main writers in the band, and we all wanna put our material on the album, which is great, because it makes you up your ante and you wanna do your very best. So we’re all kind of working hard to get tracks that we love on [there].”
She continued: “To be very general, Kim tends to like… real, just the heart of GIRLSCHOOL. So on the album, there’s quite a few tracks that she’s written with Jackie, and some of them are real fast, double-bass-drum kind of tracks that you would associate with the early part of GIRLSCHOOL. And then there’s always a few tracks that are kind of rock and roll, really. Again, Kim loves authentic… She likes to keep recreating, but really staying with how GIRLSCHOOL is, as she understands it, whereas I’m always much more experimental. And I keep reining it in a little bit, but I’m always the one that wants to try to push new boundaries. So I’ve written a couple of songs by myself and a couple with Jackie. They’re still GIRLSCHOOL, because we’re still playing them and it’s still one or two of the writers of GIRLSCHOOL, but they’re not necessarily exactly what you would expect.”
Enid added: “The way that it all came together, the producer was quite ill, and we really got things going quite late in the day. And so we went back over the stuff we’d done in the past. And we had a few ideas that we’d been knocking around. We thought, ‘Hold on. Let’s give this a go.’ I had a set of lyrics from the past. And we threw all this stuff together, and what we’ve come up with is really… It’s very much a classic rock album, but covering a whole… almost a history of rock music that we’ve loved, really.
“It’s hard to compare things, but some of heads-down rock and roll might have a touch of AC/DC or ZZ TOP or whatever, and as soon as you’ve got double-bass drums, it’s back to the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. But then there’s a few songs, like a slower, not-quite ballad, but we don’t generally do slower songs. And the odd hint of Iggy Pop or [David] Bowie in there. It’s almost like a homage to the rock music that we’ve loved and have touched upon over the decades all coming together. But we didn’t sit down and make that plan. But, like I said, because of having three different writers with three different… We like a lot of the same music, but, as I said, I tend to go left field, and Kim likes to find new ways of doing what is GIRLSCHOOL as understood by most people.
“We go for what excites us, what we’re passionate about. And I think it’s quite good to have a mix of stuff. But it’s always with GIRLSCHOOL at its core.”
Source: Blabbermouth
