BELLA642V
Release Date: 14 July 2017
Icelandic bands often resemble a force of nature, and Mammút are no exception. What’s more, the quintet’s spectacular new album Kinder Versions, released 14th July on Bella Union, is exactly the kind of volcanic presence sorely lacking in 21st century rock. Likewise their unpredictable and uncategorisable shapeshifting sound, like a very modern twist on psychedelia.
Kinder Versions’ intense character is obvious from the get-go, with opening tracks ‘We Tried Love’ and the title track the album’s two longest, at over seven and six minuted respectively, embodying everything that is thrilling about Mammút’s ebbing and flowing dynamic. “With those lyrics and the soundscape, those songs had to be the introduction,” Katrína vouches. “And with the [the sparser, gentler] ‘Bye Bye’ following, it’s the most honest way into the album.”
Mammút’s shows at 2016’s Icelandic Airwaves festival solicited rave reviews from The Arts Desk – “Hard-edged, rocky, circular songs with folky, spiritual melodies… Unreservedly fantastic” – and Rolling Stone, which referred to Katrína’s “icy, piercing vengeance” and the music’s “arena-worthy, shamanistic hard rock.”