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| "The necessity of loving your enemies and hating your friends" |
You may remember me lamenting never seeing Klikk play live (here) and then go on complaining here and there about the lack of recordings, thus assuming the band wasn't real, but a mere imagination of many, eluding me with myths regarding the band's existence. Scratch all that and listen to this:
Stream and/or download the album in its entirety at this location.
The Klikk (facebook) EP is an absolute killer. It's a dirt and sweat stained pillowcase filled with dark hardcore, crust, and mean as hell discordant metal riffs swung into and all across your mug with an awesome force, as the broken glass, barbed wire and rusty nails quickly make its way through the fabrik leaving what once was your pretty face a bleeding and infested mess no one should have to subject their eyeballs to.
In an increasingly incestious scene where hard and nasty bands are finding themselves on an endangered species list, it should come as a suprise - but it really does not - that the band shared and does share members with bands such as Logn, World Narcosis, Oyama, Swords Of Chaos, Fist Fokkers, Morð, Godchilla (hit all them hyperlink to get edumacated) and probably some other bands. Least we forget three guys are brothers, all born to the same mother and father. Yeah, it's that dire around here. Oh, and Klikk are having a coming out party of sorts this week at the best fucking festival in the world, Eistnaflug, where Ægir the drummer will play seven shows. Sure, why not? Incest, close knit? I think so. These facts cannot hinder the fact that Iceland keeps producing world class acts. Klikk only cements that fact.
I got in touch with main songwriter, lyricist and guitarist Kristján Friðbjörn and vocalist Úlfur Alexander (also of Oyama) to smear this god damn premiere of a post with some sort of context and insight. Enjoy.
Úlfur: We've been playing together for three years now. But we've been busy with other bands and projects for the last couple of years. So we've always had all this great Klikk material in our back pockets, waiting to come out.
Kristján: It wasn't actually so much of a decision not to record, it just sort of developed that way. It all started in the spring of 2009 but it wasn't until early 2010 that Úlfur came in and sorted our vocalist troubles. Also what was happening over our first year or two of being was I guess constant change. We started out as a some sort of sludge-core outfit but over time we just started playing a lot faster. That came about for a number of reasons, one of them being that Ægir just likes to play really fast.
And if you add this evolution to the fact that some of us are pretty busy with other projects, it means that things moved pretty slow in regards to recording. We did start a session in 2011 but that went nowhere for various reasons. The fact that we've waited this long though is quite good, since in my opinion, it means we are recording much better material than we would have, had it been say, two years earlier.
For added context, which songs on the EP are the oldest and which ones the most recent?
Úlfur: "Hvað, ha, hvað?" is the oldest and "Blood of my blood" / "Nietzsche " are the most recent.
Can you briefly describe the lyric topic of each song?
Úlfur: "Nietzsche;" The necessity of loving your enemies and hating your friends. "Chrysler;" Not being afraid of life, everything is just a ride. "Hvað, ha, hvað?;" The inescapable feeling that everything is pointless and boring. "Blood of my blood:" I don't know man...
With such a limited time to concentrate on Klikk due to other band engagements, has the band developed musically since its inception? if so, how?
Kristján: Definitely. Like I said, the stuff we play now is vastly different from what we played atthe beginning. Little chugging or palm muting, much more pace. The music is less sombre and melodic and more aggressive, in your face. A lot of the songs we play change as time goes on, little changes here and there and we throw a lot of ideas around, whether it concerns older stuff or new. We also don't abide by any mantra. I'm not saying anything goes, as is with no band, but we've never had a moment where we've discarded material as not being "Klikk" enough.
Úlfur: I'm not sure we've developed sound vise since our inception, but rather we've just kept on making songs and gotten better at it.
Kristján: I should hope so. We've already recorded more material on this that is meant for a full album release. As you well know with these things, when exactly that will see the light of day is uncertain, but my hope is some time this year. As soon as I can get off my arse and write some more lyrics we should be able to finish it. And well, we certainly in the mean time aim to get this EP as far as it can get. We've got nothing but positive responses so far, no reviews though (although we've sent submissions to a few blogs). Also I've written a few more songs that the guys haven't heard yet, so there's definitely more to come.
In Iceland, there are very few hard hitting punk and hardcore bands anymore. The "demography" if you will can be boiled down to Logn and Muck associated band and yourself. And then you have the Paradísarborgarplötur family, with Ofvitarnir, Norn and the likes. That's it. The rest are either super quirky bands with an air of goofiness to them or shiny or grim metal bands. Why do you think that is?
Úlfur: Shit, I have no idea why. But yeah, I think it's sad how few gut-punching hardcore/punk bands there are around in Iceland these days. I blame the internet. Too many shows watch. Too many pages of random pictures that need to be scrolled through. I dunno.
Kristján: That's tough to say. I've only been around this scene for like five years so there are other people who know the big picture better. What I did notice though was that around the time I came into all this, all the momentum the scene had had, seemed to disappear. Bands broke up like nobody's business, I Adapt, Gavin Portland, Dys, The best hardcore band in the world, Deathmetal Supersquad, Manslaughter, Hark and more. Why these things take these turns I really can't tell you. For a while I noticed that the new kids seem to be going for deathmetal, but then in the past two years the metal scene seemed to lose momentum as well, with barely any shows going on. So when you see bands like Ofvitarnir and Muck play more "indie" shows (sorry for the bollocks term) it's because that's what's out there. It probably boils down to the size of this place. In a bigger city you'd probably be able to withstand the loss of interest, but with this being a small place people losing interest had a domino effect, people saw other people losing interest and lost interest themselves and after a while there were just too few people to support any sort of scene to speak of.
Elli Bang (engineer/mixing (current/ex member of Ojba Rasta, Celestine, I Adapt) is fast becoming the go-to guy for agressive and raw bands. How was it working with him and why'd you pick him? Did he bring anything to the table?
Úlfur: Working with Elli is wonderful. He knows what he is doing and is up for anything. I don't know why we went to him.. why not?
Kristján: It was great working with him, he's such a nice guy and knows what he's doing. His facilities are being renovated and part of the album was actually recorded in his bedroom. He brought some ideas to the table and definitely improved the album in places. I really can't praise him enough. We went with him because we know him and like his work, and knew he'd be willing to work with us.
*** Email [klikkband(AT)gmail.com] the band for more information and to get your hands on the "hand made" CD version of the EP.
- Birkir Fjalar
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At the show (videos): MUCK & IN THE COMPANY OF MEN
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