Programmed Anarchy

Name: MOR

Genre: electro/punk

When They Started: 2007

Most Like: Masshysteri, Killing Joke, Mika Miko, Lost Sounds

The Sound: Teengirl Revenge Fantasy

Denmark’s MOR is an electronic duo only because members Josefine Struckmann and Karen Mø were too punk to have a drummer. They met in 2007 in Odense and decided to start a revolutionary girl band with a mission to shake up their dude dominated punk scene. Being women of action, there was no time to take out a Craigslist ad for other musicians, so they just programmed the guitars, bass, keys, and drums themselves.

The result: dark, hooky punk in the vein of Sweden’s Masshysteri collides with jagged electro and girl-gang vocals in Danish. (Well, a girl gang of two anyway.) Josefine says the lyrics are about, “being young and confused, anti-authority, love, craziness, being drunk and stoned.” Yes, sometimes necessity is the mother of awesome.

Their first single “Fisse I Dit Fjæs” (Pussy in Your Face) made some ripples in the underground in 2009, giving them all the encouragement they needed to start leaving bloodstains across Denmark. The beauty of this project is that when MOR performs live they sing over pre-recorded tracks played on their laptop, leaving their hands free to foment chaos. Without any cumbersome instruments, their live shows have become famous for gleeful mayhem.

Like any decent revolutionaries, they explain their philosophy in a written manifesto: “No rules, no school, no academic agenda but ferocity and crazy bitches … we want the audience to feel and to become a part of our universe. We want people to wonder and to think and then we want them to tear the world apart.” In short, they want everything and they want it now. And why not?

So far, what they have is a second single “Vanvidstimer” out on Spaghetti Cassetti Records, a recent US debut, and some really addictive demos on SoundCloud. Not a bad start to an irrepressible insurrection.