Reykjavík Grapevine - apr 2022, Qupperneq 18

Necksplitter: Makin! Brutal
Death Metal Gay A!ain
Stickin’ it to the Nazis just by existin!
The first thing you notice when visit-
ing the Instagram page of Necksplit-
ter, a brutal death metal band based in
Iceland, is the dominance of the colour
pink. Surprising perhaps for a band in
this genre, but not surprising for a band
with trans members, who also chose
the tagline “making brutal death metal
gay again”.
"The tagline got a lot of positive
attention, but then the Nazis also found
it,” primary songwriter and guitarist
Elía Karma tells us. “We don't engage
with the comments; we just leave them
there, and they get more pissed off by
that."
"But that's also the beauty of it,”
vocalist and lyricist Árni Hoffritz inter-
jects. “The more they comment, the
more we stick in the algorithm.”
This gave me pause. As someone not
entirely familiar with the metal scene, I
simply had to know why Nazis would be
on the Instagram account of an Icelan-
dic metal band.
"The death metal scene is very
misogynistic, so we started advertis-
ing ourselves as a very gay feminist
band,” Elía explains. “People got very
mad, and it was really fun. We got Nazis
commenting on our Instagram posts."
"When you check out these guys'
profiles, they're all into NSBM," which
stands for ‘national socialist black
metal’, drummer Stefán Fri!riksson
says, revealing to me a genre I wish I
never knew existed.
Elía isn’t particularly worried about
the attention, saying, "They act tough
online but if they met us in person
they'd be really scared because they've
never seen a woman in their lives."
Remote recordings
The beginnings of Necksplitter–who
chose their name because, Árni says,
“it wasn’t taken”--reflect the diversity of
the band itself. None of them are from
the same place. Bassist Tori Lewis is
from France, and moved to Iceland in
2016; Stefán is from Varmahlí!, Elía is
from Húsavík and Árni is from Hver-
ager!i.
Their latest album, Exponen-
tial Trauma, was recorded entirely
remotely.
"I wrote the album, then I messaged
Árni, asking if he wanted to do vocals,
and he recommended Stebbi for drums,”
Elia says. “Tori and I became friends
and she played bass."
"It started as a concept album, but
about three songs in I was like 'This is
too hard', so instead I just wrote songs
about being sad,” Árni deadpans. “And
impaling paedophiles. I'm really into
impaling paedophiles."
"We actually all met together for the
first time at a photoshoot, last Decem-
ber,” Tori says. “We all just clicked
together and it was super fun."
What’s the difference?
One question that’s always fun to ask
metal fans is what the difference is
between black metal and death metal.
The question prompts an uncharacter-
istic long pause from the group, who
throughout this interview are continu-
ously joking, laughing, and riffing off
one another.
"I think the first thing you'd notice
if we made you listen to black metal
and death metal side by side is that the
production on the death metal side is
more polished, more clean,” Árni says.
“Black metal is more rough around the
edges. There's also the lyrical content.
Black metal is more about Satan and
all that bullshit. With death metal, the
sky's the limit. You can write about
whatever the fuck you want. There's
no limits with death metal in terms of
how fast you wanna go or how weird
you wanna get. If we were to put a
dubstep bar in our song I don't think
anyone would bat an eye. Black metal
also might be the only genre that has a
dedicated subgenre for being a racist."
"Black metal is also way more closed
off musically,” Tori adds. “If you do
something a little bit different you'll get
people going 'that is not black metal'."
Keep it fun
Exponential Trauma is indeed a fun
album. Having listened to it a few times
by the time of this writing, I can person-
ally attest that it’s very accessible, fast-
paced, imaginative, inventive, and most
of all fun. This was apparently the point.
"The idea behind the album is, like
I told Árni when I sent it to him, I just
wanna do something dumb, simple and
heavy that's fun to play live,“ Elía says.
“I gave him complete freedom. All I said
was I don't want any misogyny, and it
worked."
"Musically, it's not as dark as it might
seem,” Tori says. “It is dark, but at the
same time, it's a bit upbeat."
Talking to Necksplitter is a bit like
herding cats. They love to argue, play-
fully, and veer from topic to topic almost
too quickly to catch up with them. Their
talks shift between a lot of riffing on
powerlifting and what's proper to put
in oatmeal.
The show will go on
Steering us back on track, it seems
apparent that this is more than a band;
they’re a group of very close friends
who care a lot for one another and have
magical chemistry. Given this, I ask if
they’re going to try and compose their
next album in person.
"I think if we got together it would
just be like this," Elía says, referring to
the chaos of the
past 20 minutes
or so.
" I f w e g o t
together in person
to write music, I
think we would
write a song, but
then we'd forget
it,” Árni agrees.
" We u s u a l l y
work faster if we
just keep it in
Messenger," Elía
concludes.
18The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 04— 2022
gpv.is/music
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Words:
Andie Sophia
Fontaine
Photo:
Einar Jarl
Björgvinsson