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Icelandic black metal band Altari announced that they will release their debut full-length entitled Kröflueldar erupts via Svart Records on the 14th of April. Named after a series of eruptions that happened at Krafla in Iceland in 1975, Kröflueldar represents the constant threat of ash that Altari's music lives under. Kröflueldar was a nine-year series of eruptions, and since the album took almost nine years to create, Altari felt that it was a fitting title for their scalding and ferocious music.
Fans of Craft, Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord and the more well-known Icelandic black metal bands like Misþyrming and Sinmara will revel in digging into Kröflueldar's rotten soil, but there is something far more experimental and avant-garde to be reaped within the whirlwind of sound that Altari produces. With their foundations of sound in the classic eras of early Judas Priest, some songs call to mind the discordant soundclash of bands like Voivod, Virus and even Sonic Youth in the interplay of melody and disharmony. The bewildering, but the utterly charming frenzy of taking the raw sound of metal to the limits breaks through from Altari's literal geological location in a landscape in constant upheaval.
Guitarist/vocalist Ó.Þ.Guðjónsson comments: "Bands such as Blue Öyster Cult, Interpol, Killing Joke were a big inspiration for us as well for the use of clean guitars as the sound for leads. I expressed a desire to find some balance between the overdriven rhythm and melodic yet clean leads. These bands helped us find that."
Altari proves to be a rare gem in the much vaulted Icelandic black metal crown, giving Kröflueldar the DNA of a band that feels they have so much potential and fervour brewing up in their molten kiln. Tracks like "Sýrulúður" with the vocals of Gyða Margrét are as delicate and subtle, cloaked in a smoky atmosphere, as they are dark and brooding, giving hints of bands like This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins.
When Guðjónsson states that the intention was an "overall desire for us to get away from the sound that has been a gateway for others here in the scene" they imbued Kröflueldar with a beguiling essence that's hard to pin down, but magnetically unique. Adorned with the psychedelic album cover by guitarist K.R.Guðmundsson, which evokes the storms that come when a volcano erupts, Kröflueldar is a worthy collection of songs of praise to the wild and destructive threat of nature unleashed. Listen to the first single, the title track "Kröflueldar" right below. Link
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