Reykjavík Grapevine - 28.08.2009, Page 34

The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13 — 2009
22
Music | Live review Music | Live review
Skátar's Self Inflicted
Death Blow
So long, goodbye, auf wiedhersen, adieu
To Ride, Shoot Straight...
...and have every one out of three shows kick-
ass, while the others leave a lot to be desired
Talk about leaving a gap in the Icelandic
independent music landscape. Skátar
have decided to throw in the towel and
I'm not too stoked about that. I could
always count on these guys to surprise
me when it came to their fried as shit
musical ideas. Never a dull moment and
in a city of considerable musical preten-
tiousness, every Skátar release was a
breath of fresh air and every recorded
song performed on stage had the po-
tential to become something different
and twisted, depending on where their
heads were at any given moment. This
unpredictability and recklessness often
lead to some not-so-hot performances,
but what would it be this fateful night?
The show started with Skátar's
frontman Markús playing a humorous
yet plenty musical solo performance—
him, alone with his guitar and the be-
tween song banter got everybody gig-
gling. Good for him. I'd been looking
forward to Me The Slumbering Napo-
leon as they had left a good impression
on me earlier this summer.
SURPRISED FROM THE SLUMBER
So many bands come to mind when
these guys play their dirgy, thought-out
and surprising take on experimental
indie rock (or whatever you wanna call
it). It's like the 90s of daring and hectic
music never happened, and the scene
here is better for it. I'm Being Good,
Melvins, Shellac, Metroshifter, Skátar
and Graveslime are all points of refer-
ence. These guys are oddly surprising
to the point that they seem to surprise
themselves sometimes while playing.
But it never becomes too fragile. Wild
stop-and-gos, a nasty Purple Haze cover
and a bunch of attention grabbing mo-
ments that outnumbered the few not-
so thought provoking ones. My rad-o-
meter slanted well into the red section,
so go see those guys and pick up their
stash for further inspection when it
comes out.
You can say all the jaded shit you
want about Sudden Weather Change,
but one should be thankful for a young
indie band that echoes Unwound in-
stead of The Killers and Sonic Youth
as opposed to the fucking Strokes. Joy!
I've seen them pull better sets out of
their collective cute asses but they still
made me want to listen due to the sweet
connection and f low that seems to be
connecting these boys. The bass sound
was big and gnarly and their set ran
smoothly. Too bad the sound guy didn't
realise there were three guys singing.
YOUR IRONIC SHOES ARE NO
GOOD FOR STAGEDIVING
Reykjavík! were up next and it didn't
take them long to get everybody over
into their realm of jangly, noisy and
explosive rock debauchery. They have it
all figured out now, to the point one is
anticipating a false move or a crappy set
but it just doesn't happen. These merry
men of grease are oiled up to such an
extent it's like a train of fun and out-
bursts that cannot be stopped. I'm not
gonna bother with naming highlights,
but while they were playing all the
goodbyers of Skátar were packing the
house and things got intimate as shit.
Good times. Too bad indie rock kids in
their ironic shoes don't know how to
stagedive.
By this point the house had a large
number of malnourished indie heads
and normies that just got off from
work. A great mix, might I add. We
were even graced with the presence of
the annoying longshoreman that yelled
"SLAYER!!" between every song. Good
lord. Also there was a considerable high
number of drunk, under aged kids in
attendance, which only added to the
party-like atmosphere. What about the
boy that was crowd surfing with a bottle
of Jägermeister in his hands? Guess the
security didn't give a damn. Stellar.
SWAN SONG
There was a lot of love for Skátar in the
room and people anticipated their swan
song with shining eyes, which is pretty
amazing considering it was getting
much too fucking late. Skátar began
their set with an anti-bang. The drum-
kicker broke, and they had to start the
song over. Oh well. It was certainly for-
givable. The die-hard Skátar fans were
eating it up, and a joyous chaos ensued
and it was fun to witness. Crowd surf-
ing, stage invasions, crappy stagedives
and Markús' unpredictable stage antics
plus plenty of funny banter between
songs.
The fact remains that Skátar failed
to do their own material, and their last
night on stage, any justice. It's rather
sad, really. A lot of mistakes were made,
the band sounded torn and untight for
an alarming portion of the set, and there
were way too many awkwardly long
pauses between songs that stretched
the set to the point where it was almost
unbearable to stick around for the not-
so glorious end. But hits were played,
tons of people had fun, Skátar looked
humbled but they were having a fuck-
ing blast. I truly am saddened that there
won’t be any new Skátar material. Let
us all marvel and digest their recorded
legacy, 'cause there's so much unique
brilliance in their body of work that we
will have plenty to sink our teeth into
for years to come. A band of nerds for
the nerds. You will be missed.
Entombed are holed up in their dress-
ing room, busy rehearsing a stand-in
bassist, as mainstay Nico Elgstrand had
a baby just the previous Monday. Not
needing the practice, singer Petrov, by
his own admission drunk since the AM,
is sat on a bench outside Iðnó amus-
ing himself with drink and a cell phone
recording of himself playing the piano
(rather virtuously I might add).
Inside, stoner rockers Brain Police
are serving a slab of stoner rock in the
key of stoner rock. That being the case,
it all sounds like an endless stoner rock
medley, stoner rock being too damn
lazy ever to have evolved to the level of
song-writing. The thought strikes that
they ŕe perhaps too perpetually stoned
to realise they ŕe over. The audience
though—by dint of not showing up—
must have. Next, please.
Dr. Spock, proud purveyors of nov-
elty and nonsense, are first and fore-
most a raging live act, and as such truly
a sight to behold. Two singers strong
and armed with gimmicks galore, the
band rip the near deserted venue sev-
eral new ones. Moustachioed string
bean vocalist Óttar Proppé looks like
he´s leading a Bavarian hoe-down while
his squealing counterpart, recovering
fat fuck Finni, looks like the live perfor-
mance cardiovascular workout burns
more obesity per hour of vocal outburst
than any fiery furnace in hell.
Their drummer, armed with more
chops than the entire Icelandic lamb
farming industry, regularly paces the
stage as if never having been taught
his proper place. The band often lapse
into what might be called a more main-
stream version of early D.E.P mixed with
any random Patton project, and only
stray from their path of aural transgres-
sion when launching into bluesy Beach
Boys laden fare and the odd, bizarre,
passage of left field reggae renderings.
Sororicide, legacy and legend
wrapped in a neat brutal bundle, are
performing tonight with something
resembling the original line-up for the
first time since... since pretty much
the first couple weeks of the Icelandic
death metal scene. Their shit being an-
cient, I fear the material could be merely
a heap of over-hyped lore. Seldom have
I been so wrong. Uncommonly tight
and old school as a all hell, they pull
out a show so fluid and utterly groovy
that the sheer technicality and hairpin
turns of modern death metal seem by
comparison oh so boring. Leaving En-
tombed with a fuckload of work cut
out for them, Sororicide turn back time
to the blastbeat’s heyday, all the while
bewildering the audience by featuring
a guitarist dressed and coiffured such
that egregious Britpop ought to issue
offensively from his strings.
Entombed, plagued by awful sound
and minimal atmosphere, disappointed
horribly. As this Friday show’s slow fiz-
zling burn gave rise to harsh criticism,
and the sold out Saturday performance
exploded like a series of clusterbomb
blasts, we’ll pretend Friday night never
happened and launch right into a re-
view of their incendiary Saturday night
onslaught.
Stand-in bassist Victor Brandt of
Satyricon and Totalt Jävla Helvetes För-
bannat Svart Skit Mörker För Fan, now
three gigs deep and hitting his stride,
contributes his fair share of damage
to the all consuming obliteration per-
petrated by the band, and the stellar
sound production lent added force to
the gravity of frightening doses of death
n’ roll riffage cast in lead. The sold out
venue teems with aural orgasm and a pit
erupts like equal parts violence, chaos
and mayhem reaching a boiling point.
Life and limbs flail every which way and
from the depths of a rapturous melee
of ecstatic flesh and bone, spread with
a layer of hell-bent crowd surfing, bod-
ies are randomly and unexpectedly
catapulted at chairs, tables and fellow
citizens. Keeping drinks safely confined
to glasses becomes akin to a herculean
feat, as liquid spurts everywhere like
high velocity splatter born from colli-
sion atop jarring collision.
Entombed, sitting on a huge dis-
cography, run the gamut of releases,
pulling off a masterful balance act of
a set that combines old with new with
raw with crushing. Opener “Chief Rebel
Angel” kindles more audience passion
than most numbers, but tracks off of
DCXLXVI: To Ride… fall like a rain of
bricks and satisfy at least your humble
narrator. Interspersed with early Left
Hand Path era material the barrage cul-
minates with “When in Sodom,” a track
all the more potent tonight when be-
ing wielded at a club bearing the name
Sódóma.
Music | Review
Irony is definitely my cup of tea. If
it's discordant, I’ll usually like it. If
it's homogeneous, I generally won't.
Therefore Húðlitað Klám, being
a discordant and diverse album,
worked out pretty well for me. It is an
impressively varied album, so much
that I'm not even going to try and slap
a label on it. LastFM describes them as
a 'five piece rock/comedy outfit', but
even if you don' t understand the lyrics
or the jokes, it's easy to appreciate
the light-hearted approach they bring
to a heavy sound. It gets intense at
times, but the whole album is really
worth a listen whether or not intensity
is your thing. And if you don't like one
song on it, it doesn't mean you won't
like some of the others. So, if you
are open of mind and pure of heart,
listen and enjoy. -BERGRÚN ANNA
HALLSTEINSDÓTTIR
“I’ve come to say exactly what I
mean,” sings Pug on the statement-
of-intent opener, Hymn #101, “And
I mean so many things.” That tale of
stubbornness, love and adventure
showcases the 23-year-old’s inherent
knack of framing a raw and emotive
acoustic-country with often self-
searching lyrics. It’s poetic, too: Call
It What You Will’s resonant imagery
and matter-of-fact descriptions of
life-changing experiences are simple,
brilliantly observed and shruggingly
fatalistic as you like. The influence of
Springsteen’s expansiveness reigns
supreme in Nobody’s Man and the
excellent I Do My Father’s Drugs,
whilst the blues harp-driven Hymn
35 sounds a lot like Fields Of Gold as
sung by Bob Dylan. The fact that the
harmonica is probably deliberately
flat (as it is on the EP-ending title
track) adds atmosphere. Emotive and
naked, independent and occasionally
hard-eyed, Pug’s uncomplicated
arrangements give him authenticity
and power. -JOE SHOOMAN
Skelkur í Bringu
Joe Pug
Húðlitað Klám (2009)
Nation Of Heat EP (2009)
skelkur
Discordant and diverse, in a cool
way
thejoepug
Country-blues from the Dylan/
Springsteen stable. Nothing new
under the sun, but the sun shines
still.
+
+-
Entombed
Sororicide
Dr. Spock
Brain Police
Iðnó 21.08.2009
Sódóma 22.08.2009
BIRKIR FJALAR VIÐARSSON
JULIA STAPLES
BOGI BJARNASON
HÖSKULDUR HÖSKULDSSON