(Our French contributor Zoltar made his way to Iceland again to attend the June 2025 edition of Sátan festival, and we received the following report, with a few of Zoltar‘s photos.)
Be warned, you’ll often read this same phrase over and over again in the following report: Only in Iceland…
Mind you, it’s far from being my first time here as after a first visit in the mid-00s as a regular tourist (no metal involved), I had the chance to attend a few times the now defunct Eistnaflug festival and also to be invited to be part of the Wacken Battle Iceland jury. Yet, this tiny country with a big heart never ceases to amaze me, on all levels.
And yes, only in Iceland could a festival be set up in the middle of freakin’ nowhere (that would be in this very case Stykkishholmúr for you, roughly one three-hour drive up from Reykjavik, population 1,300) in early June called Sátan Festival. And yes, there’s a twist here. The accent makes all the difference, since Sátan (look it up, google it if you don’t believe me) is first and foremost the name of a local mountain with an old legend attached to it.
Besides a hard-to-transcribe-on-paper pronunciation – try something like ‘sauthan’ – the name has actually something to do with a legend about a troll, a haystack, a horse, and a couple of extra things I’m not entirely sure of anymore… But that’s not what really matters here, as this new and up-and-coming festival (this is their second edition) encapsulates everything that makes the Icelandic scene such a special one.
For a start, let me remind you that Iceland officially holds a little less than 400,000 people on an island as big as Ireland, just to give you a sense of perspective. Out of those 400,000, the ever-reliable Metal Archives accounts roughly more than 200 bands, where everybody is playing everybody. One of the themes of the weekend was actually to see how many gigs one could play over the course of three days, the festival main organizer Gísli Sigmundsson giving the example by, besides doing what organizers do you know, doing three shows with three different bands, including two on the first day… You know that tired old cliché about the metal scene being one big family? Well, it’s fucking true baby, only in Iceland.
Only in Iceland can you bump into as many musicians or gigs organizers on and off stage at the same festival, with Eistnaflug former CEO paying a visit on the first day and even riding some people back to Reykjavik, D.G. from Misþyrming as part of one of the panels happening every day prior to the festivities (more on that later) and behind the scene, and various local actors like Ingólfur from Divine Defilement (killer brutal death metal whose fourth album has just been released on Time To Kill) were never too far away, etc.
Only in Iceland can said festival happen in some local gymnasium next to a soccer field where young kids practiced a few meters from metalheads wearing offensive black t-shirts and drinking one beer after another without any hiccup. Only in Iceland can you witness a former president (!) and longtime metal fan Guðni Jóhannesson rubbing shoulders with local musicians and quoting Amon Amarth (!!) while introducing a panel about heavy metal and Norse mythology. Only in Iceland can you attend a festival in June when the sun never truly sets, even at 2 am. And only in Iceland can you see a mix of the young, or sometimes very young, playing their first ever show, and confirmed acts.
And only in Iceland can you have so much fun.
THURSDAY
If there’s one thing Icelandic metal musicians hate, it’s playing by the rules. You’ll hardly find here any ‘straight-forward’ band. Whatever the style is, although ’80s metal in general and classic heavy metal and power metal in particular remain almost nonexistent (one notable exception being Power Paladin but I digress), they can’t help it. It has at one point of another gone south.
Openers Miðnótt are a good example: this is their very first gig where they perform the only four songs they’ve recorded so far and it shows. Yet, once you’re past the surprise of hearing those four ladies plus one dude coming up with their own sludgy unexpected take on Hatebreed’s ‘Last Breath’, you realize it’s a good representation of what they’re aiming at, that is, a down-tuned but not quite mastered yet mix of hardcore, black metal, and even nü-metal in places.
Bastarður may be Sólstafír’s Aðalbjörn Tryggvason’s little plaything and in a way, it is. Like the true gentleman and proud family man he now is, the man is at the end of the end your average Joe and needs to let it rip every Saturday night or so while listening at ear-shattering volume to Motörhead and Entombed and drinking cheap beers isn’t he? And that’s exactly what Bastarður stands for, no-frills crust/punk/death n’roll about what’s cool in life, aka drinking, fighting, and pretty much nothing else. To ensure he gets the message right, he’s enlisted a bunch a forty-plus years veterans to back him up for those few live shows, including Sátan‘s own Sigmundsson, here on bass. Unapologetic fun all around.
Bastarður
Quite popular in Iceland yet virtually unknown abroad, although their last record was released through Norwegian imprint Dark Essence, this is Momentum‘s reunion gig and first in over a decade. Gone now are everybody’s long hair with all four members now looking like the regular Dads they surely are with their early death metal roots now long gone. Quite progressive in places, their music definitively borrows some of Neurosis‘ epic vibe while taking sudden rhythmic turns à la Meshuggah. But it’s truly when they’re almost standing still in suspended animation, briefly turning off their distortion pedal and doing vocal harmonies, that they really take off and prove how Icelandic (i.e., beautifully weird) they are.
Vader don’t have that same kind of problem. If there were any, they’d probably crush it and move on to their next gig. Still one of Europe’s hardest working bands, they’re currently promoting a short-but-sweet new EP, their 40th anniversary as a band, and the 25th anniversary of one rightfully-so praised album, Litany. Nothing feels more Vader-like than, well, another Vader show.
But even if you’ve seen them approx. 867 times (which is normally the case if you live in Europe and have been attending metal festivals since the mid ’90s as I have) you can’t fail but to be impressed by how consistent they sound to this day, even if there’s little surprise to be found in today’s setlist (‘Carnal’, ‘Silent Empire’, ‘This Is War’) even if it feels good for the old timers to hear them pull out of their collective hat their debut The Ultimate Incantation opener, ‘Dark Age’. And besides, the evergreen Piotr Wiwczarek aka Peter (who will turn 60 next October) still pulls out the best divebombs in the business (sorry Rick Rozz).
One punter mentioned to me that Brain Police was the “Icelandic equivalent of Fu Manchu” to which I should have replied that they actually sound way closer to, say, Unida or even Slo-Burn, that is the straight-up-rock variant of the Kyuss stoner rock template. They may have the right tools, down to the Orange Amp and Gibson SG setting, but their singer Jens Ólafsson tends to outdo John Garcia way too much and there’s little substance to be found in their by-the-book songs, even if the overenthusiastic crowd beg to differ.
The real treat for deathheads that night is Sororicide‘s final performance. They might mean very little to most of you, apart from those who’ve read about how insanely expensive and never-reissued their sole full-length is these days, but to locals they will forever be the country’s very first-ever death metal band to have released an album back in 1991, on a short-lived local imprint. And the fact that, although a product of its time, said album (The Entity) remains a good example of early ’90s European death metal obviously helps.
Sororicide
From the line-up which recorded The Entity, only Sigmundsson and fellow guitar player Gaui remain, but drummer Unnar has been here since 1992 and Þráinn Árni Baldvinsson from Skálmöld is guesting on second guitar for the occasion, plus various friends joining for a song, one at a time. Ever since they had agreed to play Eistnaflug back in 2010, they always made clear that no new music was to be made, especially since only Sigmundsson and Unnar remain active, musically speaking. Even clearer was the fact this was to be their last-ever performance, putting the band to rest once and for all.
It might be shambolic in places and Sigmundsson ain’t as brutal as he used to be but it’s still funny then how the whole thing, concluding as it should with ‘Deathless’, the last song they ever recorded back in 1993, turns out to be not the expected funeral march but a celebration of a now sadly bygone age, their late guitar player Fróði Finnsson (who died of cancer at the age of 19 back in 1994), and metal in general.
FRIDAY
Dys (not to be confused with the Boston straight-edge outfit of the same name) is one of the country oldest anarcho-punk bands and still embody the Rudimentari Peni/Crass mentality. While all their lyrics are in their native tongue, their singer (their only original member left) makes sure everybody gets the point, and we surely do.
Fortíð played Icelandic black metal even before there was such a thing, that specifically distinct Scandinavian sound yet with its very own sense of melody and dissonance. Yet after a string of solid albums in the late ’00s, it feels as if they, or more specifically their main man Eldur, has lost the spark and tonight’s performance is no different, the most enthralling part of their set being the wide and desolate Icelandic landscapes displayed on video behind them.
High Parasite stand out here like a sore thumb, their number one selling point being that it’s My Dying Bride’s Aaron Stainthorpe‘s new home away from home, his current status in MDB being a tad confused at the moment to say the least. For better and for worst, HP have absolutely nothing to do with classic doom/death, so while you can’t help but encourage the man’s desire to get out of his comfort zone, the problem is it’s not 1997 anymore, when this blend of rock, trip-hop, and lush gothic sounds would probably have been a hit. But it just feels too forced, and in his white tuxedo and half-painted face, Stainthorpe‘s sometimes scruffy growls totally feel out of place.
Sinmara
Unlike Fortíð and despite the fact they haven’t released anything new since 2019, Sinmara make a rare appearance which reminded me why they remain one of this country top black metal act. My grumpy colleague Gunnar from Metal Hammer Germany may complain about them being “way too much into Deathspell Omega” and their songs may tend to seemingly use the same frenetic tempo, but they nevertheless have a very dominant presence and simply just don’t fuck around. No time wasted on small talk nor anything fancy, just straight-up in-your-face black metal, under the (heavy) influence of Deathspell Omega or not.
Carcass have been promoting for what seems forever their latest album (2021’s Torn Arteries) and have been on tour ever since, the only novelty being Jeff Walker‘s now short haircut (give the man a break, come on) and them pulling out once in a while the track ‘Pyosified’ from Reek Of Putrefaction. And yes, the Heartwork material, from which they perform no less than five tracks, still gets the biggest cheer. Extra kudos to the ever-caustic Walker with the number one sent off the weekend: “a moment of silence for all of those who died during the Cod Wars. So many fish…”
SATURDAY
Beneath
Prior to Ophidian I sweeping the plate clean with their, so far, insanely good second album from 2021, Beneath were the darlings of tech-death in Iceland, with whom they shared two members, unsurprisingly. No wonder they were/are (?) signed to Unique Leader Records as their three albums, especially The Barren Throne, had in store everything fans of that genre wanted, plus some extra brain cells and a kinda cool sci-fi concept. Ever since one of their guitar players moved to Stockholm a few years back, they’ve remained silent, so this is their first show in quite some time and it sometimes shows, especially since former members drummer Ragnar Sverrisson (Helfró) and, guess who, Gísli Sigmundsson have accepted to help them out for the occasion.
When you play such a demanding style, one can’t afford to miss a beat or two and you can’t tell those five lads haven’t time to rehearse as a five-piece as they should have. Yet, although near exhaustion point and the fact he hasn’t played with them since 2013, Sigmundsson takes full advantage of ‘only’ doing vocals here and embraces the occasion as if he was headlining the Madison Square Garden, turning this technically-demanding show of talent into a party.
While no one will dispute how important for not only hardcore/crust but also metal a seminal album like Hear Nothing, see Nothing, Say Nothing is, it nevertheless feels weird to see Discharge turned into a pure nostalgia act, pretending as if Thatcher were still charge, even with three out of five original members in tow. Then again, so many bands out there have perfected, some would say bettered, the whole D-beat sub-genre they solely created (kudos to Wolfbrigade!)… But they are genuinely eager to make their very first Icelandic gig (in 48 years!) worthwhile, greatly helped by a twenty-plus song set full of classics covered by countless metal bands (‘The Possibility Of Life’s Destruction’, ‘The NightmareContinues’, ‘Never Again’, ‘Ain’t No Feeble Bastard’ etc.) and a surprisingly young audience crowd-surfing as if it was 1982 all over again.
When he is not helping out whoever in Norway needs a thirty-plus years black metal veteran vocalist – from Gorgoroth to Old Man’s Child or Urgehal – Ørjän ‘Hoest’ Stedjeberg stubbornly steers Taake, assisted live by a rotating bunch of solid session members curled up from Helheim, Gorgoroth, Syrach or Aeternus. He remains the main focal point though, even hidden under his hoodie as he is tonight, gesturing as if invoking strange powers or bending over his microphone stand in dramatic postures. No matter how conservative and pure second-wave-of-Norwegian-BM visually (corpsepaints all around) and musically the music may sound/look at first, its venomous sense of melody and subtle complex arrangements slowly wins you over. And yes, that’s a freakin’ banjo on the intro of ‘Myr’ and yes, that freakin’ works, just don’t ask me why.
Apart from being hastily lumped, for better and for worst, in the dreaded pagan/folk metal category, Skálmöld are, at best, regarded as an oddity on the mainland, despite a few high-profiled festival appearances, like at Hellfest 2024. But at home, they’re huge. As in HUGE, as proven by tonight’s logical headlining spot. 95% of the audience are obvious fans, as revealed by the overwhelming number of shirts sporting their logo around me, and they chant every bloody chorus, every single word, while jumping up and down like kids in a candy store. To my ears, this all sounds like some cringy dudes wearing kilts and sandals singing about fishing in a lake and getting stoned drunk on ancient ale but you can’t deny their ability to drive the entire crowd (minus one, guess who) nuts. Told ya: only in Iceland.
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