About 10 days ago, I put up a post about the forthcoming album by this Icelandic band, which had then just started streaming on a Finnish metal site. I also featured one song from the album, which had simply floored me. That song drew an extremely positive response here at NCS. I just discovered that two days ago Sólstafir appeared on Icelandic television, with a live performance of another song from the album called “Fjara” (Icelandic for beach) and it’s now up on YouTube.
This is clearly fated to be an atypically mellow day at NCS, with that new Devin Townsend demo and that William Basinski track included in our last post. At least for the day, we may have to adopt Andy Synn’s tongue-in-cheek re-naming of the site: “No, Clean Singing!”
“Fjara” is a slow, doom-y, song that’s quite beautiful and, to me, quite arresting. Just like the first song I heard from this album, it made me stop, pay attention, become fully drawn into the music, and start playing it again as soon as it finished. I have no doubt it will follow me around like a ghost the rest of this day.
The black-and-white video really suits the music, too; you can tell that the band members were emotionally invested in this song to the hilt when they played it. Do check it out after the jump. Svartir Sandar is out now on Season of Mist. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could watch bands like this on American TV?
8 Responses to “SÓLSTAFIR: “FJARA””
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The only way a band like this gets played on American TV is if the cast of the Jersey Shore were in it. And the networks would probably still put up a fight: “IT’S LONGER THAN 3 MINUTES – ARE YOU INSANE”.
Season of Mist is really building quite an eclectic roster of bands (to their credit)
And if you ever wanted SOLSTAFIR ice cubes, you better act fast!!!!!!
Available as a collector’s edition, limited to 500 copies. The collector’s edition includes:
– “Svartir Sandar” on double CD in Digipak
– T-shirt or Girly with front and back print
– 4 frosted shot glasses printed with art taken from “Svartir Sandar”
– Black ice cube tray with SOLSTAFIR logo and customised ice cubes.
Ice cube trays from Iceland. Makes sense, though maybe too obvious. I would have preferred Solstafir beach towels, or suntan lotion. Especially since, according to The Font of All Human Knowledge, “Solstafir” seems to mean “crepuscular rays” of sunshine — columns of sunlight radiating through gaps in clouds.
On the other hand, Google Translate says it means “September”. Fucking Google Translate.
According to Metal Archives: “Sólstafir” is the Icelandic word for “radiating sun beams”
And after the debacle of SoM shipping out tons of broken Morbid Angel boxes, the less fragile something is and easier to produce, THE BETTER!
Based on your description I was 80% sure this would suck. But it’s actually really quite fucking perfect for this overcast day.
Bravo!
Also, not understanding the lyrics makes it better for me. I love when bands sing in their native language.
And…is Extreme News trolling or what!?
Scooooore! Glad you liked this.
And yeah, I don’t know wtf Extreme News is or why they are suddenly putting a significant percentage of our posts on their site, resulting in all these pingbacks. I will have to investigate . . .
I FUCKIN LOVE THIS BAND. Ever since that earlier post i’ve been hooked. It’s so beautiful and mesmerizing. Something inside melts and it takes you to places we don’t go as often as we should. And no. I’m not high. Except on Solstafir.
i love this song, it is my favourite since i first heard it!
Here is the official Video of Fjara: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbcove.me%2Fk8qz8tf0&h=IAQHgOVOMAQFMFchi6WWpjUIIVhahvQm3y0h-6ZH4rKP5aw