So, May this year I held the Icelandic part of the Wacken Open Air Metal Battle contest for the 10th time and I invited a shit load of foreign music biz people to be in the jury. 10 people made their way to Iceland for this and coupled with 6 domestic people I had a jury of 16 people this year. Why not go big!
This was my 10 year anniversary of sending bands to Wacken, so I decided to go big. The winner of the contest was a young band that simply blew everyone's minds. Judges talked about how they knew they had the winner only seconds into their performance. haha. In fact, the band was 1 point shy of taking home a perfect score, as all judges except for 1 gave them their max points, with the lone jury member not doing so, gave them his 2nd highest remark. Pretty crazy.
Anyway, the band is called Múr and they play "keytar driven doomsday metal", or something like that
haha. their bio reads:"Keytar-driven extreme metal from Iceland. Múr (Icelandic for brick wall or mortar) forges apocalyptic soundscapes where soaring melodies and unrelenting rhythms combine with introspective, nihilistic narratives to form a wall of raw emotion.
The band first saw the light of day in the summer of 2021, after having gradually pieced itself together the previous three years. In the following months, Múr went on to make a name for themselves in the Icelandic metal scene, consistently delivering tight, gut-punching performances to great reception, playing both their own shows, and being the opening act for three separate album release concerts."
Needless to say the band played Wacken earlier this month and got a very nice 4th place in the finals! Not bad for a band only formed last year. I'd like to take the opportunity here and brag a little bit.
With this result, Icelandic bands have now been in the top 5 of the contest (30 bands are in the finals) 3 times in the last 4 attempts. Not bad for a nation of only 360.000 people The band doesn't have an album out yet, but they are currently putting finishing touches on their debut album as we speak and have already gotten label interest from several labels. In the meantime, they did release a killer sounding live video, filmed with 2 cameras and mixed sound. Check it out here. Don't let it bother you that the audience is a bit subdued, but this was actually recorded at the keytarist/singer's graduation concert from his music school, so there's lots of non-metalhead family members there, grandparents etc...
I think this band is going to get pretty huge. See for yourself. Note the 7/8 time signature
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDPLUkFB7Yw
Look at these babyfaces
