Reykjavík Grapevine - jan. 2021, Blaðsíða 18

18The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 01— 2021
A Glorious Shrine To
Nothing...
Núll is the band to not-exist to
Words: Hannah Jane Cohen Photo: Julie Schneider
Album
Check out Núll at
0000000.bandcamp.com and pick
up the ‘Entity’ LP at van-records.com
In years prior, I used to always
describe Núll with silly epitaphs
like ‘The Most Ungoogleable Band
In Iceland’ or other such non-
sense. I’m going to stop that now.
There’s nothing funny about this
group and to even approach their
music with humour now feels to-
tally disrespectful and idiotic.
‘Entity’—their sophomore effort,
which came out in August—is so
naked and soul-scraping that you
need to respect it. It’s a release that,
to be frank, you should feel privi-
leged to even hear. I certainly do.
The band, which has put in near-
ly a decade in the local scene, re-
sides somewhere within the murky
depths of black metal, doom and
DSBM, but putting a label on them
feels reductive. In fact, I’m only
doing it right now to provide some
basic bit of context for readers. Núll
doesn’t exist within a genre; it exists
within an ideology. There’s an ethos
behind the group that’s impossi-
ble to ignore—one that permeates
every aspect of their existence.
Nothing
“Nothing,” guitarist D.G. responds
when asked about this ethos. In
typical black metal style, the mem-
bers of the group prefer to only use
initials. “The idea of nothing,” he
repeats simply; his voice deadpan
in a disarmingly steady manner.
Drummer T.I. nods. “Núll means
nothing,” he reiterates bluntly. For
reference, the word “núll” in Icelan-
dic is zero, so it’s therefore hard for
me to tell if, with this statement,
T.I. is explaining the literal trans-
lation of the band-name, echoing
the philosophy of the group, or
doing both in a rather pithy man-
ner. I’d lean towards the latter.
“It ’s more centred around
non-being, kind of like the Hebrew
concept of Ain,” T.I. continues.
“The nothing before the nothing.”
Ain refers to the state of God
before they created the universe.
It can be more broadly explained
as the substance of non-existence,
which lies in direct contrast with
the fabric of God post-creating
light. Existence vs. non-existence.
Matter vs. anti-matter. Some-
thing vs. nothing. Núll vs. Entity.
Everything
“[Entity is] pretty much the opposite
of what Núll is,” D.G. admits impas-
sively. “It’s irony. It’s a sarcastic title.”
Núll is notorious for such sar-
casm. Over the years, they’ve con-
sistently messed with what people
would expect from them, show-
ing up to gigs in Adidas track-
suits or drag—a far cry from the
dark, ritualistic clothing many
of their contemporaries don. But
these aren’t laughs or stunts, no,
just measures to point out the ri-
diculousness of everything—your
expectations of a show included.
“[The album] revolves around
the absolute futility of anything.
It’s nihilistic but not in the sense
that we’re all beat up and sad about
it, it’s just a statement of fact.
Everything dissolves. Everything
ends. Everything will return to
nothing,” T.I. states simply. “It’s
also kind of a sarcastic remark
in itself. We spent so much time
working, recording the album and
making it sound as grandiose as
we could because, like the rest of
mankind, we are essentially build-
ing a glorious shrine to nothing.”
The glorious shrine
My first experience with ‘Entity’
was painful. It’s not an easily di-
gestible listen, even to a black metal
fan like myself. As soon as singer
S.S.’s first screams hit a few min-
utes into the fittingly-titled open-
ing track “None,” I felt viscerally un-
comfortable. It’s been a while since
a release affected me in such a way.
And that was just the first
song. From there, things only
got more intense, crescendo-
ing into the last two minutes of
“An Idiosyncratic Mirage,” which
might be some of the most over-
whelming music you’ll ever hear.
“It’s supposed to be oppres-
sive,” D.G. responds, when I tell
him this. “You can’t control
it. It’s just there. And it dawns
upon you without a warning.”
The album is even designed to
feel uneasy. “I always thought it was
a pretty funny idea to start with the
longest and slowest song just to ruin
people’s moods before they hear the
rest of the album,” he continues.
“And after that is the shortest song,
which is possibly the easiest to di-
gest out of the whole album. Then
it just keeps on going downwards.”
So it goes
While Núll’s overall veneer of
pointlessness has provided an
apt soundtrack for 2020, the al-
bum was written far before the
pandemic. It was merely, as T.I.
calls it, fate that it was released
in the midst of it. But right now,
the group is looking towards the
future, awaiting the days they can
play live shows again. But if not, as
is fitting a band based around the
concept of nihilism, they’ll deal.
“Wasn’t it Nietzsche that said
that all an artist needs is bread
and his craft?” T.I. questions.
This earns a rare laugh from D.G.
“I was reading that today!” he re-
sponds. “Twilight of the Idols.”
T.I. smiles. “So when it all comes
down to it, if we can sustain our-
selves and practise our craft, we
have enough. We would still be
writing and recording music even
if nobody was listening and we
will continue to do it even if there
are no gigs or audiences. That’s
not what matters. And I mean, of
course, this is Núll,” he concludes
calmly. “Nothing matters.”
Yup, this is the picture they sent for their big magazine article
Music
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“Everything dissolves. Every-
thing ends. Everything will
return to nothing.”