Louder AAA
What goes around comes around. That’s broadly what we understand from the concept of ‘karma’. And South London quintet The Karma Effect are proving that classic rock sounds – whether you consider them old hat, a retro sideshow, or timeless and transcending fashion – will keep us coming back.
Last month they released their third album, Cruel Intentions (the follow-up 2024’s Top 20 predecessor Promised Land), which is filled with irresistible, lascivious guitar riffs and some brilliantly chant-worthy choruses.
It’s rock’n’roll with an elegantly weatherbeaten, old-fashioned soul, sung in the potent tones of principal songwriter Henry Gottelier, who helps us to get a handle on what the band are about.
The pandemic helped them get their act together
The Karma Effect and friends made the most of the covid lockdowns that hit soon after they formed. “We were ready to go [and start gigging]. Then the world shut down. So I started writing the first album. Then every time we were allowed to do something together in a studio we would go in and work intensely hard together.
"We ended up being one of the only bands able to release music, because we’d gone in and recorded it when we could. We couldn’t play live for a year, but we ended up getting a fan base really quickly, because everybody was so desperate for something new.”
They’re doubling down on ‘modern vintage’
“Everything we do is heavily rooted in seventies rock,” Gottelier admits. “But on this new album, when I was writing it and we were doing demos, I had in my mind that I wanted to focus a little bit more on bringing the retro aspects a bit more into the twenty-first century.”
This, he feels, will offer a key point of difference between TKA and some contemporaries. “Some of our favourite bands, like Dirty Honey and The Band Feel in America, they’re making it so, so retro that you can’t record unless it’s, like, on an eight-track. I love it, but I want to kind of bring that element into the modern age, and be this generation’s band like that.”
They aim to make it 'massive'.
For The Karma Effect, wherever they’re playing, it’s a case of go big or go home.
“We always want it to feel more like a show than a gig,” says Gottelier. “You don’t necessarily have to have fireworks and big TV screens, we just try and make everything sound massive and take our audience with us. We have big musical interludes, every song kind of leads into another, we have structured little segments, and if we do drum solos and guitar solos, then fine, whatever, but it’s a show, first and foremost. We try to get that feel into our records, too.”
Clothes maketh the band
It’s important to Gottelier that The Karma Effect look the part, too.
“There’s a fine line between being an image-driven band and a music-driven band,” he says, “and I’ve always wanted us to be the latter. But it’s so important to have a strong image and a strong brand. I’ve grown up loving bands like Aerosmith and Queen, led by all these huge, larger-than-life characters. You look at Freddie Mercury, Steven Tyler. And even though Guns N’ Roses would say it wasn’t planned, they cultivated their own look.”
The main man has a sideline in tribute acts
“I do a bit of session work, in different classic rock tributes,” Gottelier explains. “I’ve even been Robert Plant in a couple of things. I play in a band called Classic Rock Revival. We’re kicking that off again later this year. It’s great fun just playing the hits that we love.”
They don’t take themselves too seriously
“I like a tongue-in-cheek element to rock’n’roll. It shouldn’t be too serious,” says Gottelier. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a mega-fan of, like, parody – unless it’s Spinal Tap, of course. But with some of my favourite bands, say Aerosmith, you listen to some of the deep cuts on their records and I love the wordsmith element of their lyrics. Same with GN’R on the Use Your Illusion albums. I like my music to be fun, not too po-faced.”
Cruel Intentions is out now via Earache.
