
This inspired her to write a song based on a scifi Noah's Ark, which became "The Men Who Ruled the World". Manson had interviewed George Clinton for her podcast The Jump, and was inspired by his P-Funk Mothership concept. Manson had written most of the lyrics for the album by the end of 2019, with a few finishing touches at the end of the sessions in February/March 2020. No Gods No Masters is self-produced by Garbage, in collaboration with their long-time studio engineer and mixer Billy Bush.

Final delivery of the album took place in September 2020. Various bass guitar parts were recorded by Eric Avery, Justin Meldal-Johnsen and Daniel Shulman, all of whom had recorded on previous Garbage albums.įinishing touches were applied via digital collaboration the album was mixed throughout July 2020. Not that it sounds anything like Roxy Music, but that was definitely something we thought about a lot." Recording work began in earnest from September until March 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions impacted after the final week of recording. 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. It has lots of guitars, lots of melodies and hooks. "It's certainly a different-sounding record than our last couple. 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. Drummer Butch 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. In mid-2019, Manson had described the material from the album writing sessions as "cinematic". 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. The quartet sketched out the skeleton of the album over two weeks, jamming, experimenting and feeling the songs out.

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.

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.
