review: Dynfari -- Icelandic band returns with fifth album

Dynfari

Myrkurs er þörf

Code666

18 September 2020

How much of a role does understanding the lyrics have in your personal enjoyment of music? These songs are apparently in Icelandic (two have titles in English), including one called "Of Suicide and Redemption"? Online translations of the titles of the other songs show things like: "I Destroyed Myself," "I Fade through the Void," "Long Nights (in Bottomless Spiral Staircase)," and "Deadly Dark Days" (or: "The Dark Days of Death"). Of course, if you know Icelandic, you will immediately begin arguing that the online translations are not accurate. Fine. This reviewer knows not a single word of Icelandic. Regardless, when your band uses words and phrases like "suicide" and "I destroyed myself" (Maybe in Icelandic it means "I killed/murdered myself"!), some people will think that your band is not for them. People will say, "All those songs about suicide?! I think I'll pass." Really, who are we to blame anyone for having that reaction, but let's leave aside the issue of the lyrics, and see what the music is all about on their fifth album.

The band seeks sound landscapes that make it possible for the listener to participate by engaging with pleasurable patience or melancholic contemplation (This reviewer does not know what the lyrics say; therefore, it's just human vocal sounds). The album is filled with broad waves of sounds that move at slow, steady paces, and then sometimes it changes to very high speeds, and yet such movements seem congruous with the general mood. The picture does not form immediately. The clarity happens perhaps after some time has passed along the way through the (many) completion(s) of the journey.

It has a gentle, soft production that is pleasant to the ear. The melodies are hidden but they are present, subdued and subtle. The rhythms are expansive, and above them the tremolo picking weaves all over. The vocals have been made to fit the music and not become the main attraction/distraction. The voice sounds like it is a midrange tone kept at a certain distance from the instruments so as to not overwhelm them. The voice is something like a desperate, velvet enunciated growl-howl turned into a singing that is not truly melodic but neither is it aggressive, angry screaming. The music is not super complex, but it is meant to be absorbed with repeated listens. It is music for contemplation, rather than music for the body or physical reaction (moshing).

This reviewer has no idea how this band is perceived in Iceland. Are they considered a bunch of sickos who promote suicide? Do Icelandic people see these gentlemen in the street and immediately begin to jeer and boo and say, "Say, now there, you deadbeats, we here in this town have heard the scuttlebutt that you fellows love them songs about the bone orchards and such, why don’t y’all play something fun, like 'Ja Ja Ding Dong' or 'Double Trouble' or just something fun, you blowhards!" Of course, if Olaf Yohansson sees these gentlemen in the cantina, he'll have a blow-up and demand "Ja Ja Ding Dong" and even after the band plays it and says to Olaf, "Ok, we played it now, Olaf, is that enough?, Olaf will yell back, "It will never be enough! I only want to hear “Ja Ja Ding Dong!” That Olaf. He could start a fight in an empty saloon. Olaf must not be a fan of post-metal.

Myrkurs er þörf by Dynfari