BAND OF THE WEEK: Drýsildjöfull
Black metal + punk + dungeon synth + evil goblins = AWESOME
(all photos by Estefânia Silva)
I know, I know, I’ve been going on just a tad too much about the Icelandic scene and the stuff I discovered at Norðanpaunk, but bear with me. The reason for this insistence is excitement, and excitement only exists when the music is great enough to generate it - and for a potentially jaded born-in-the-70s carcass like me to still get excited about something, you know it’s gotta be special. And some of these bands that are popping up on the island once again really have that unmistakable tingle of exhilaration to them.
Because look, I know how easy this stuff is to dismiss. When Iceland started to get a lot of attention in the underground a while back, after years of Sólstafir preaching alone in the sandy desert (in metal/heavy music terms, I mean, obviously not counting Björk or Sigur Rós or artists of that magnitude), mostly through its black metal scene based around Misþyrming and the Vánagandr label, there was a little backlash too. Envy-fuelled, mostly, but still, I heard it many times - especially with my collaborations with both magazines and festivals - stuff like “so all it takes is to be Icelandic for you guys to pay attention to it, right?”. It wasn’t all it took (as several Icelandic bands that never got much attention might even tell you themselves), no, I’d even go so far as to venture the revolutionary concept that all it takes for attention to come to you is to, well, be awesome and offer something different, which those bands really were/are and did/do, and even so it isn’t guaranteed. But it also helps when a scene appears, of course, even if a “scene” really is nothing more than a group of people doing similarly amazing things around the same period of time in a specific location. All that takes is inspiration, collaboration, and dedication. Get together with your like-minded mates, work hard and be awesome, and you might be the next “Iceland” or whatever.
But I digress. Basically, what I want to stress is that no, I’m not into Drýsildjöfull, or any other band from any other place, for any other reason other than them blowing me away with their music and, in this case, with their live show too. It helped that I saw them where I did and could place them in a bigger context, with their members also being part of other, different bands, and with the overall vibe making sense for a band like this to exist, but they would have ended up in my radar anyway.
As I’ve mentioned already in the festival review, it was the visuals that caught me at first. The singer appears as a creepy goblin, there’ also a ghost on stage too, and finally a dude in a coat and a hat playing guitar as if from another dimension. It doesn’t make any sense and it’s fascinating, it’s like entering a room in a MMORPG where everyone has picked a different skin. The video game reference doesn’t come out of the blue, since a lot of the dungeon synth parts of their sound could well come from 8-bit game soundtracks, like the early Castlevanias and stuff like that. The perfect mix of those elements with lo-fi, furious black metal and raw punk minimalism is at the heart of what makes Drýsildjöfull so endlessly fascinating. When thinking of raw, lo-fi sound, some might relate that to a certain limitation in the composition aspect, but As Darkthrone, Ulver, Leviathan, Akitsa, Paysage D’Hiver and many more have proved over the decades, that couldn’t be further from the truth, and though those are big names, I’m happy to throw these people in that ring right now. The talent is there, the tunes deliver, so why not? That much was already apparent from the band’s very first release, ‘Dýflissupaunk’, from 2022. It’s the more video-gamey of the bunch and a perfect introduction to what you can expect from these guys.
Not too shabby, to start off your career with a tape on Grime Stone Records, by the way! If you’re into what you’re hearing with these guys, have a look around the labels’ Bandcamp and I’m sure you’ll find a bunch of other stuff you’ll love. Anyway, the band’s second tape (they only do tapes, yeah - KVLT!) is called ‘Púkastuð’ and it came out on the equally amazing Iron Lung a year after the debut and it’s a little bit more structured, even more polished I would say, but very relatively speaking, all within a rough, lo-fi perspective still. But the synth parts feel more organically weaved in the songs overall, and the black metal is punchier. ‘Púkastuð’ is in my opinion Drýsildjöfull’s darkest effort so far and shows remarkable growth only with a few months of separation from the debut.
Finally, getting back to Grime Stone, only a couple of months after ‘Púkastuð’ came ‘Verri en vondur’, which might be their finest hour so far. Amazing fuzzy riffs, an unstoppable cadency that always feels like they’re running one step ahead of you while you desperately run behind to catch up, synths more sparingly used but totally nailing the songs identity when they do show up… I know we’re talking about a 14-minute album recorded by people who make video games (as you will discover on the interview with the intrepid goblin-vocalist down there, right after the jump) and who dress up like monsters, but ‘Verri en vondur’ really does feel “mature”, in the best sense of the word. It doesn’t lose the youthful, fist-pumping enthusiasm of the first two tapes, but it feels more serious, more aggressive, essentially more metal than before.
And with that, we’ve covered Drýsildjöfull’s entire catalogue so far, a grand total of 26 songs in 37:29, so I strongly recommend you go through the whole thing in one session to really get a feel of how amazing it all is. Because we like to go the extra mile here at TDM to give you the full picture of artists, we managed to hunt down the actual goblin, Fannar as we will only call them, and convince them to talk to us for a little bit before they scurried off into the nearest dungeon to, presumably, chew on the bones of dead adventurers for a bit more. Check it out after the jump.
‘Dýflissupaunk’ and ‘Verri en vondur’ are out now on Grime Stone Records.
‘Púkastuð’ is out now on Iron Lung Records.
You can find Drýsildjöfull nowhere, really, as it intentionally has no online presence. So make do with the Bandcamp stuff I gave you. “Calling from the underground!”
“If I was looking to expand beyond the underground, I probably wouldn’t be making some dank dungeon punk.”
- Fannar
Let’s start at the beginning with Drýsildjöfull – what are the origins of this project, and what were the initial objectives? Was the idea already to throw black metal, punk and dungeon synth into a cauldron and see what came out?
Fannar: It was kind of on accident. I was working on some music with one of my friends, when something came up and she had to take a break. I was still just bursting with creative energy and I needed to put it somewhere. So I think what came out was just a snapshot of my brain. I love fuzzed out caveman music with tupa tupa drumming, and I love dungeon synth and video game music leads.
Would you like to talk a bit about the lyrics and the general conceptual idea behind each of the releases, especially for the benefit of us non-Icelandic speakers? Even the name of the band might seem complicated to some of us for sure – google translate offers “goblin” as a translation, is that more or less correct?
Fannar: Yeah, goblin is correct. All the lyrics are from the perspective of a goblin. That’s all I’ll say. But, I don’t include lyrics with the tapes and I doubt even if you speak the language, that you can make out what I’m growling about. I like that the lyrics are a mystery. It fits the vibe. In my mind at least.
What are your intentions, so to speak, with this project? Is it meant to remain an underground thing, or if it happens to grow and start to be discovered by more people and you start getting more demand for it, will you be okay with that?
Fannar: I don’t really think about that. If people like it, then that’s great. I wouldn’t put it out there if I didn’t want to connect with people on some level. At the same time, if I was looking to expand beyond the underground, I probably wouldn’t be making some dank dungeon punk.
As you know, I only discovered the band at this year’s Norðanpaunk (better late than never, right?), through that fantastic live show you had there. I loved the visual side of it too, with you as the goblin and the ghost on stage and everything. Is that the fixed visual for the band live? Do you feel that the visuals translate well the kind of vibe you want?
Fannar: Thank you. This was our first live performance. Maybe we’ll do it again. I never planned on playing live. Norðanpaunk asked me a year ago, and I only said yes because Þórir from Óreiða (and ROHT, and a gazillion other projects) had said that he’d play guitar in the live band. I came up with the idea for most of the visuals pretty much right away. I almost decided to not include the ghost, because I was feeling so nervous about the performance and I didn’t want to think about it. My partner, Alexandra, who also plays with me in Börn and Dauðyflin, convinced me to keep it in, and I’m glad we did. It looked pretty cool, I think.
You are indeed a visual kind of person, of course – I loved your illustrations and video games that I saw when I went to your site! I’m a sucker for that Bubble Bobble / Rainbow Islands / Parasol Stars / Snow Bros / Tumblepop / Pang / etc era of video games, but it’s a hard thing to recreate without just falling into empty nostalgia, and you really seem to nail that delicate balance. Would you like to talk a bit about this side of your creativity? Is it hard to manage time so you can juggle all of these interests?
Fannar: I don’t have a job, so I have time. Also, I’m compelled to create. To make stuff. It’s all I think about. They say: Jack of all trades, master of none. And I’m definitely no master of anything, but I do feel like working in all these different mediums can give you a greater perspective on art and creativity as a whole. Many of the non-technical skills are transferable between disciplines.
In musical terms, Drýsildjöfull aside, you are mostly a drummer, right? At least you were happily blasting away for THREE different bands during the festival. Does it also feel natural for you to step into the frontperson role with this band?
Fannar: I used to front a hardcore band, back in the day, but still no, it definitely does not feel natural. I think it went well. I was super anxious honestly. I thought maybe my disability would get in the way. I was even worried I might not be able to stand for the whole set. Or me not being able to move so much, might make it boring. In hindsight I think it might have even helped a little bit. Cause I’m tiny and I kind of walk like a goblin. I’m excited to do it again and to push myself and get better at it.
Having listened to all three tapes/EPs, I like how the balance of the various elements varies – one is more black metal, another with a much more present dungeon synth element. Do you plan these things in any way beforehand, or is the writing for each release more spontaneous than that?
Fannar: On the second and third releases, there were definitely elements that I wanted to push. ‘Púkastuð’ I wanted to be darker and more mechanical. I was very much influenced by the ‘Shadow of the Beast’ soundtrack. I got really into synthesised pan flutes. ‘Verri en vondur’ was more about the riffs and maybe a little bit about going back to what I did on ‘Dýflissupaunk’ with what I had learned making ‘Púkastuð’ and trying to perfect that sound.
You’ve even released the tapes through two labels that I really like, Iron Lung and Grime Stone, so I’m sure you’ve gotten feedback from a lot of places outside Iceland. Has the exposure grown in these couple of years that the project is active, have you felt that more and more people are into the music?
Fannar: Drýsildjöfull has no online presence, really, outside my personal social media so I have very little idea what’s going on, honestly.
Do you have plans to put out a full-length album at any point?
Fannar: ‘Púkastuð’ and ‘Verri en vondur’ are full-lengths in my mind. I think 15, maybe 20 minutes is perfect for this kind of music.
In fact, to tie that to a bigger question, how do you see the next steps in Drýsildjöfull’s future? Do you feel you still have a lot to express with this project?
Fannar: I have no plans. I want to make another tape at some point and I have a few ideas but we’ll see.
