Riff Of The Week: Ïçéłåŋð Edition

April 6, 2019

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Yes, those letters are pronounced differently, don’t @ me linguistic nerds.

Last week we held a best of 2019’s First Quarter Edition. The theme netted a fair few key social media shares which swung the vote back and forth between the top 4 or 5 entries, but in the end A Novelist outclassed the opposition and took home the win for the UngulatedUlmus. Congrats to all who entered, great round!

This week we asked for riffs from Icelandic bands.
Here’s what you sent in…
Surprisingly not featuring any Svartmidaððy, Sinmama, or Nanðra!

Brock Samson
Carpe Noctem – ‘Sá sem slítur vængi flugunnar hefur náð hugljómun’ (Riff @ 0:00)

I hadn’t heard of Carpe Noctem prior to the Riff-Raff podcast (then called the appendix I believe) but one listen of those whammy dives and weird riffs had me hooked. Their album Vitrun was my favorite release of 2018 and it was all capped by the final song on the album Sá sem slítur vængi flugunnar hefur náð hugljómun (say that 5 times fast). That tremolo riff that opens the song and builds due to the other instruments gets me every time, especially when listening to the entire album. It feels dark yet maintains the token strangeness this Icelandic group infuse into their own brand of black metal.

The_Dude
Zhrine – ‘The Syringe Dance’ (Riff @ 1:04)

Hard to choose one song let alone one riff off this masterpiece, but the riff at 1:04 really gets the blood flowing.

DrummerNard
Zhrine – ‘Empire’ (Riff @ 0:43)

I’m no good at these short descriptions. This riff is catchy as well.

Howard Deanzig
Misþyrming – “Söngur Heiftar” (Riff @ 3:04)

The track shudders to a crawl around the 2:40 mark with a perfect little brooding buildup and then explodes into this emotional riff at 3:04. This is how it’s done (or at least how it should be done).