Anyone who knows me personally knows I’ve been to Iceland a couple of times, since I won’t shut up about it. Anyone who's been to the Nordic country will understand why.
My first time there was on a week-long trip to spend time in the wilderness — waterfall after waterfall, craters, glaciers, lava fields, thermal water lagoons, puffins, and a lot of sheep. My second time there was a quick three-day layover en route to Oslo and, afterward, Sweden for Word of Mouth Fest in Örebro.
Both times, I looked up hardcore (or adjacent) shows in the country but found nothing except the Reykjavík Punk Museum, which has some cool memorabilia from back in the day. However, there were no shows or traces of modern hardcore. (I did manage to catch Mobb Deep on a basketball court in a residential area this last time, probably the coolest/weirdest side quest I’ve been on yet.)
Fast forward to a couple of months ago, when Racetraitor announced they’d be playing a couple of dates in and around Reykjavík, and I found out there was a small scene over there. I hit up one of the bands playing — Gaddavír, Icelandic for “barbed wire” — to punish them with questions about Icelandic hardcore, punk, and some sprinkles of death metal. Their sophomore album, Akranes krú, came out earlier this year and rips!
Anyway, here’s what Gaddavír’s vocalist, Kristján, blessed us with. Consider it a free lesson on the heavier side of the Icelandic music spectrum.
First off, please introduce yourself to No Echo readers.
Hi, my name is Kristján. I am the vocalist for a band called Gaddavír, a hardcore punk band from Akranes, Iceland — a small industrial town about 45 minutes north of the capital, Reykjavík.
I don’t know much about the scene in Iceland yet, so what was your journey into hardcore?
I can’t quite remember what came first, discovering The Exploited on YouTube or walking into a show by happenstance with the Icelandic hardcore punk band Dys. Both happened when I was around 13 and started my obsession with hardcore.
This was around the time when what Icelandic oldheads refer to as “the golden age of Icelandic hardcore” was ending, which was between 2000-2008. So even though I got a small whiff of that scene, my exposure to hardcore after that was mostly through the internet and friends showing me cool bands.
I started frequenting shows more often around 2013. At that point, there weren’t really any hardcore bands. Metalcore and black metal seemed to be all the rage (and black metal still is, to a certain extent).
Hardcore in Iceland started having a resurgence around 2016 when bands like Dauðyflin, Dead Herring, and ROHT were formed. We followed shortly thereafter.
How did Gaddavír come to life?
Gaddavír came to life originally as a joke for a local battle of the bands in the spring of 2017. We had all been in a pop-punk band called Snowed In together (which is still active) and decided to start a hardcore band really just because our drummer had reached the age limit for participating in the contest. We ended up having so much fun doing it that Gaddavír took on a life of its own.
Diving into that “golden age of Icelandic hardcore” — which bands were around? Which venues held shows? I’ve heard that Ólafur Arnalds (pianist/composer) drummed for a band called Fighting Shit.
Oh, that’s not a rumor — he played drums in Fighting Shit. He also played drums at one point for Celestine and I Adapt. People talk about I Adapt being the “main” Icelandic hardcore band from that time. They did tour a lot outside of Iceland and probably had the most releases.
Although I love that band, my personal favorite was and still is Dys. The one I saw first and ended up playing guitar in many years later. They were a lot more Discharge/metallic crust-coded than their contemporaries.
There were a lot of hardcore bands at that time, and some that only released maybe one demo or one EP. A lot of it has been lost now in the great Myspace crash.
The most important band from that time that I haven’t mentioned yet is probably Gavin Portland. They kind of came from the ashes of Fighting Shit and, according to those who I have spoken to, burst onto the scene with more ambition than anyone had seen before. They recently had a comeback and are working on new material, so I’m very excited to see what the future holds for them.
Honorable mentions: Brat Pack, Oak Society, Chino, Hark, Raw Material, Hemra, Eðli Annara, Everything Starts Here, and B’eyes. Some of this stuff is very hard to find.
The venues I hear most about from that time were Kaffi Hljómalind and Grand Rokk. Kaffi Hljómalind was an anarchist cafe that hosted all-ages shows, and I managed to catch a couple of shows there before it closed in 2008 or 2009. Grand Rokk was more of a dive bar-type venue, I think. I don’t really know much about it except that it had a reputation for having shows into the early morning hours.
I know Icelanders are into rap, as I had the chance to catch Mobb Deep at KR’s basketball court this past March. I loved how no one was on their phone, and you could see people of all ages there — from teenagers all the way to 50- and 60-year-olds having a good time. Is it the same for heavy music?
I mean, one could argue that heavy music started in Iceland in the late ’80s with Swans-worship band HAM, which released an awesome EP in 1988 called HOLD. I feel like most heavy music in Iceland today is either directly or indirectly influenced by HAM.
Only a couple of years after HAM were doing their thing, we saw death metal explode in Iceland. This was in the early ’90s, so we have people in Iceland who were young then who are now in their 50s and still very much into heavy music and going to shows frequently.
At the same time, heavy music is having quite a resurgence with young people. So you will see a very varied age group at punk and metal shows here.
What’s it like for a hardcore band to get gigs over there? Is it mostly based in the Capital Area, or does it extend all the way to the north and the fjords?
There is currently a bit of a venue crisis going on.
Only about a year ago, we had a DIY venue in an abandoned bank in our hometown where we would host shows. The municipality has now sold the building to people who plan on turning it into a hotel.
There were also two all-ages venues in Reykjavík and a number of bar venues. Now there is, I think, one bar venue that is easily accessible to bands. Other venues have either closed or are temporarily out of commission due to noise complaints from nearby hotels or neighbors.
I do hope this situation is temporary, though. Under normal circumstances, most shows are in Reykjavík, and we try to have some in Akranes as well. Shows will happen further away every now and then, mostly in Akureyri.
There used to be a very active scene in Húsavík, a town of around 2,500 people in the far north. This was in the ’90s and early 2000s. That is something I find fascinating.
I saw that Racetraitor played both days there. I don’t know about a lot of bands coming through, except Blacklisted a few years ago. How did people react?
Racetraitor already played, and the reception was very positive. One of the shows was in my hometown at what used to be a Masonic lodge. That might be my favorite show of the year.
Alright — what would your dream lineup be for a five-band gig in Iceland? It doesn’t have to be locals, just bands you like.
World Narcosis, Dys, Judge, Paragraf 119, and the first Darkthrone performance in 30 years.
What are Gaddavír’s future plans?
We are playing Lilló Hardcore Fest at the end of October in our hometown. We are playing Andkristni, Iceland’s oldest heavy music festival, in December. Then we have a Nordic mini-tour in April.
Other than that, we have started writing new material for the next album.
Which other current bands from Iceland would you recommend?
Out of the hardcore side of things: Dauðyflin, ROHT, and Gavin Portland.
Hardcore adjacent: Krownest, Duft, and my other band Grafnár.
Iceland has a strong black metal scene. Some bands (albeit great bands) have been talked about to death and don’t necessarily need my approval. I will say, though, that a relatively new band from here, Forsmán, recently released what has become my favorite Icelandic black metal album. And I will use this opportunity to recommend two Icelandic black metal bands that I feel are severely underrated: Andavald and Carpe Noctem.
Icelandic ’90s death metal legends Sororicide also had a comeback recently. I want only good things to happen to them, and I think everyone reading this should buy flights and tickets to their show in London in February.
Takk fyrir!
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Akranes krú is available on vinyl via Reykjavík Record Shop.
Gaddavír on social media: Instagram
Tagged: gaddavír
