Odds are you are not familiar with the band. If so, this review/stream should suffice as an introduction.
If you thought their brilliant debut seven inch was chilling, wait until you hear their new stuff. No, scratch that, just listen to these rough mixes of their soon-to-be-released devastation (after the jump).
With this elusive band (members of Logn, Morð, Klikk, to name but few) becoming somewhat active and having heard a lot of the yet-to-be-released album in various stages of its development, I felt that an interview was in order. What follows is a chat with WN's drummer (Ægir Bjarnason) along with rough mixes of songs that will eventually end up on the band's future releases. For more information: read on.
A lot of time and many concerts have elapsed since the release of your manic seven inch. What has happened in camp WN since then and how was the response to your debut?
The response was generally pretty good. It got good reviews and people liked it, but I don't think we've ever been active enough to reach out to more than a pretty select group of people within the Icelandic music community. I'm confident that the release of our new record will change that. By the end of 2012, we had already finished writing most of the material intended for our next release, our first full-length - songs that have been in the works since around the release of the 7" (released in 2011). For the better part of this year we have been working on recording that material and finalising some newer songs. Currently we've only got a few songs left of vocal recordings and the mixing process is well on its way, so I'm pretty confident the recordings will be ready by the end of the year. Finally. The new material grabs influences from all over the place, and it's decidedly more varied than the 7". There's a significant increase in black metal-ish guitar work and I guess it's more refined, in a way, than the 7" - but still explosive and chaotic as fuck. Halla (bass/vocals) has become a way bigger part of the band (she'd only been in the band for a few weeks when we recorded the 7") and the intense female vocals she brings to the mix have become ever more prominent (see video). She kills on the new record.
And you are working with Elli (engineer/mixing) again. Is there a change in how approached these recordings and the mixing... New ideas?
The songs are totally different in many ways, and they demand more work and better recordings. On the 7", we recorded everything except the vocals in one late-night session, and hardly did a second take for any of the songs. We ended up using only two mics on the drums, few guitar tracks, and you can hardly even hear the bass - whereas on the new record, we have layers upon layers of guitars and everything comes through clearly enough while still sounding very natural and raw. Working with Elli is always a pleasure. He has done a lot for this record, bringing in a bunch of ideas on how to boost certain elements of each song and tying it all together, and it's become all the more powerful for it.
With World Narcosis being a bit busier than your other band Logn, yet the bands being sonically similar in some ways, like the drumming, grinding intensity and uncompromising wall of noise so to speak, do you find it hard to separate the two aesthetically and musically? In a way, it looks like when Fighting Shit's last stuff started hinting Gavin Portland, you know what I mean?
I do know what you mean. For a while, we did have sort of a hard time separating them. Me and Sindri (guitar player + main song writer in both bands) would jam around new riffs, not knowing which band we should use them with, sometimes trying them out on both vocalists to see whose approach would fit the song better, as their vocal styles are very different from one another - but sometimes we would try to keep away from playing something we felt suited WN better at a Logn practice, as the Logn guys might start to covet certain riffs while we had other plans - and vice versa. Lately, however, I feel like its become much easier to distinguish between the two - Logn has a somewhat crustier, more metallic side to it, especially in regards to the different vocal styles, Fritz (vocals) vs. Viktor (WN's vocalist) and Óðinn (Logn's bassist/back up vocals) vs. Halla. WN is a bit more high-pitched, overall. They've also become quite different in terms of musicianship, even though a lot of it is done by the same people.
Logn is usually quite a lot busier - there's a lot going on in the riffs that I do my best to follow and emphasise with my drumming. WN is more stripped down in way and has more high-pitched tremolo picking and furious blastbeats where I'm really just trying to keep up with Sindri's shredding.In both bands, Sindri keeps writing riffs that push me to the limits of my drumming abilities and push me to find new ways of transferring my ideas and interpretations of his playing onto the drumset.
I have no idea, but I look forward to seeing what either band will do after releasing the stuff we're working on right know, if they will grow further apart musically or perhaps even closer. Who knows?
- Birkir Fjalar
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WORLD NARCOSIS - s/t
Violent, raw, loud, ridiculous and Icelandic
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