Reykjavík Grapevine - 18.05.2007, Síða 6

10_RVK_GV_06_007_MUSIC/REUNION
“But it’s been 14 years of silence, it’s been 14 years of
pain, it’s been 14 years that are gone forever, and I’ll
never have again,” sang Axl Rose on Use Your Illusion II
in 1991. I am pretty sure he never heard of the Icelandic
thrash metal band Trassar, but incidentally, since taking
a break in 1991, there were exactly 14 years of silence
until the band regrouped again in 2005.
Despite a prestigious following in the late eighties
- early nineties, the band never managed to put out an
album. Still, every music nerd with a nose for metal music
knows the band to this day. They have now released their
first album, Amen, on the record label Geimsteinn. The
Grapevine contacted one of the two remaining founding
members, guitarist Rúnar Þórarinsson, to learn more
about the gathering.
“It basically started as a nostalgic trip,” Rúnar exp-
lains. “Me and Bjössi [guitarist and founding member
Björn Þór Jóhannsson] always wanted to get the band
working again and make an album. At first, we just did
not know the right musicians to do it. Later, we were
never living in the same area at the same time for long
enough to do it. When Bjössi moved to Reykjavík recently,
I decided to buy a house with a garage basically to be
able to start jamming there.”
The band was originally contrived in Eiðar, a small
boarding school on the East coast of Iceland in 1987.
The name, Trassar was originally obtained from a song
by Iceland’s best metal band at the time, Bootlegs.
“They had this song called Thrash Attack, and I called
their guitarist and asked if I could use that name for
my band. He said yes and I was very excited. I was 14
at the time. Later, when we played some live shows in
Egilsstaðir, the kids would yell out Trassar instead of
Thrash Attack for some reason. We just decided that it
would be a perfect fit for our band [Trassar essentially
translates to “slackers” in English] so we decided to
change the name. And it proved right. We have been
slacking for 14 years making this album.”
After creating a local fan base through legendary live
performances and finding receptive crowds in Reykjavík
where the band was voted runner-up two years in a row
in the Battle of the Bands, Trassar decided to move to
Reykjavík in an attempt to take the band to the next stage
in 1990. That is when the group started to break up.
“It was just your typical band bullshit. Being in a band
is like being married to multiple people. It is always a
battle between ideas and directions. Bjössi and myself
wrote basically all the material, and when we came to
Reykjavík we were all living in different places and we
had no practice space. Everyone was working in their
own corner, heading in different directions musically
and ideologically. Some people had more influence than
others and people handled that differently. After a while
it just dissolved in a dish of sour grapes, even though
me and Bjössi always remained great friends.”
In 2005, it was time for another try. At first, it was
only the two guitarists. But after jamming together for
three months in an unheated garage in the middle of
winter, they added bassist Lúðvík Þórir Guðmundsson
who had played with Bjössi in another band. Soon
thereafter, Ampop drummer Jón Geir Jóhannesson joi-
ned them and along with him they added Ólafur Árni
Bjarnason, who had spent the last 15 years honing his
tenor voice performing operas around Europe.
With this formation, the band headed for the studio
to finally record the album that was scheduled to happen
14 years ago. “When we started playing again, it was
like stepping into a time machine,” Rúnar says. “And
when we started rehearsing the old songs, we could
hardly go through one song with out coming up with
a new one.”
14 years is a long time and the world of metal has
changed considerably since the heyday of thrash metal
in the late eighties. When writing new songs, are Tras-
sar still influenced by Ride the Lightning and Master of
Puppets?
“We have added to our influences considerably.
Myself, I have been playing a lot of blues and jazz music.
If you listen, you will hear some influences from Alice
in Chains and Björk in the vocal sections. I don’t know.
It is difficult for me to judge this myself. Bjössi and me
have both become big Led Zeppelin fans over the years.
Bjössi never liked them when we were young. But we
are not trying to run away from our past. Our biggest
influences will always be the four big groups of the thrash
metal era: Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer.
This is what we built on. The song Hamfarir is partially
a tribute to the great Ham. We purposely “quote” the
riff from Partýbær, but other than that, it is basically a
very heavy blues song with lyrics stemming from Robert
Johnson.”
Trassar intend to play extensively this summer in
support of their long awaited release, but plans are
already underway for the next album. “This album was
not even finished when our creative producer, Jón Hallur
Haraldsson, started talking about the next release. We
still have over 20 songs in store that are almost fully
prepared,” Rúnar says, determined not to spend the
next 14 years in silence.
Trassar Regroup for Another Attack
Text by Sveinn Birkir Björnsson Photo by Skari
“Being in a band is like being
married to multiple people.
It is always a battle between
ideas and directions.”
Léttöl
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