Time traveling with Milk Music, Dinosaur Jr., Cannibal Corpse and Stafrænn Hákon

The last 24 hours have been spent going back in musical time. It started with the surprisingly good and informative Cannibal Corpse documentary Centuries of Torment: The First 20 Years. This film is great. Not only is the Corpse's history, rise to fame and respect very interesting but it gives great insight into the beginnings, history and evolution of North American death metal. And how fucking rad was underground thrash metal in Buffalo? Damn. If anyone out there has link to some of the demos and early releases mentioned in the film, please email me!

I had also just finished reviewing Full Of Hell's full-length and elements on that thing send me back in time as well, what with all the '90s extreme metal/punk/hardcore goings-on found therein. Check the review for more thorough (but not so...) articulation as to what I was feeling.

And most recently, this very morning in fact, my buddy (also old timey death metaller), all around musical multitalent and a songwriting beast from the shadows, Mr. Ólafur Josephson who's musical-self is widely knows as Stafrænn Hákon (press: Icelanders Stafrænn Hákon move toward Rock described as Power-Ambient, currently only audible to left handed polar bears. A daring but natural step with pop singalong melodies, which may sound unlikely for the ambient post-rock/electronica band) got at me on facebook.

He shots me a youtube link for Dinosaur Jr's. "Kracked" from You're Living All Over Me. I started reminisce. The good 'ol days were mentioned. Then he throws me a link to Milk Music's "Beyond Living." A band I'd never heard before and I was immediately transported to years long gone by. The song is perfect. I figured it was a band from the '90s I'd overlooked but Stafrænn Hákon assured me this was indeed new shit, a current song by a current band. Hell. In 2011 throw-back and revivals are o.k. to even the hippest of the hip because the bloke told me he'd just read about them on Pitchfork. The past is the new future, if only for a while. See what I did there? So Im listening to "Beyond Living," I'm loving it hard and my mind races...

A current song from a current band making me feel real young again. I’m in a time machine. The ’90s are not even close to finished in our minds. The year 2000 still has a sci-fi ring to it and none of my friends carry cell-phones on regular basis and hardly anyone has internet access. If anything, we’re not concerned about the internet as an invention, concept or a tool at all. We're not interested, really. We're busy doing everything else. We’re getting mailorder catalogs through the door. We use highlighters to mark our albums of choice. We send well-concealed cash in envelops to the US and the UK. We patiently wait for our package to arrive. In the meantime we start bands, play Sega, hang out in groups of three or more many times a week. Me and my brother engage in home-brewing. Our group of friends is a tight one and we know all the same songs because there’s no free downloading or social websites to scatterbrain our musical menu. We listen to albums rather than check out songs. The albums do the rounds - from house to house, apartment to an apartment. These are good times.


Check out and follow Stafrænn Hákon on his website  facebook  bandcamp  twitter
- Birkir Fjalar


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