No Gods No Masters

No Gods No Masters is the seventh studio album by American rock band Garbage. It was released on June 11, 2021, through the band's own label Stunvolume. The album was distributed worldwide by Infectious Music and BMG and preceded by the singles "The Men Who Rule the World", "No Gods No Masters" and "Wolves". "This is our seventh record, the significant numerology of which affected the DNA of its content: the seven virtues, the seven sorrows, and the seven deadly sins," singer Shirley Manson explained, describing No Gods No Masters as "a critique of the rise of capitalist short-sightedness, racism, sexism and misogyny across the world." Background and recording In 2017, Garbage recorded and released a standalone digital single titled "No Horses", which the band hinted could be the direction their new material would sound. Writing for Garbage's seventh album began in April 2018, following some preliminary work at Butch Vig's home studio, the band set up space in Palm Springs to write demos. The quartet sketched out the skeleton of the album over two weeks, jamming, experimenting and feeling the songs out. Work was paused in the latter half of 2018, as Garbage marked the twentieth anniversary of their second album Version 2.0 (1998) with the two-month 20 Years Paranoid tour, before reconvening in Los Angeles to finish the project. In mid-2019, drummer Butch Vig said they had about 35 jams at this point and about 7-8 of them were beginning to shape into songs. Manson had described the material from the album writing sessions as "cinematic". Vig remarked on musical references to Roxy Music and Talking Heads, while also noting that the album was quite eclectic, similar to 2001's Beautiful Garbage, in that each song has its own identity. At first Vig thought the album would go in a more orchestral direction, however this changed when the music was developed further to match the intensity of Manson's vocal. "It's certainly a different-sounding record than our last couple [of albums]. It has lots of guitars, lots of melodies and hooks. It's poppier than the last record," explained Manson, "We were very inspired by the weird, subversive pop of Roxy Music—that was kind of our muse. Not that it sounds anything like Roxy Music, but that was definitely something we thought about a lot."