Hailing from the village of Hveragerði in the south of Iceland, AUÐN deliver haunting melodies and beautifully frozen atmospheres – as opposed to the jarring and caustic blunt force trauma that has brought this remote place in the Northern Atlantic to the black metal forefront.
I went on a musical journey with them to explore Iceland’s darkest sounds.
Welcome to MHF Magazine.
Since releasing your self-titled debut, your musical instincts have gotten sharper and wider. Do your attribute this musical growth to your personal experiences or is it just a matter of practice and hard work?
Personal growth and the ability to work together more closely, reading each other’s styles and preferences and moulding them together has become easier over time and we’ve synced pretty well.
You create music about bleak landscapes, embracing death and giving into melancholy and grief. If you could paint the perfect picture of your ideal target audience, the kind of audience that perfectly understands your music, who would that be? What does this person look like internally?
People that connect with the feelings/mood involved without having to understand the lyrics. That’s the beauty of music and those who relate to it. Our target audience is whoever needs to experience what we express, there is no dress code.
Hailing from the village of Hveragerði in the south of Iceland, the name Auðn goes hand in hand with the country of Iceland. Part of your unique work is always attributed to the eccentric landscape of your country. Does that ever become restricting?
-I can imagine to some readers, answering countless interviews about Iceland’s effect on our music is starting to sound like a cliché, but we are a product of our environment and it moulds and shapes us in our daily and creative lives for sure. When writing, you can always distance yourself from that initial spark of inspiration with creating a fictional scenario. Our writing lyrically is not restricted by the nature that surrounds us, but rather enriched by it.
You are capturing rather vulnerable emotions with your sounds. Does that have a therapeutic effect on you? Meaning, do you utilize creating music to unleash your own emotions?
For sure; we are all great friends and working together through the years making music together has been therapeutic and also trying. We don’t always agree or get along but somehow always manage to find common ground. For me, writing most of the lyrics, they are a form of expression, exaggerating emotions and experiences and creating stories around them. Also, the act of writing itself is a form of therapy as you can find focus and a calmness rarely experienced in daily life.
Since 2010, you embarked on European tours and captivated festival audiences at the biggest European fests, such as Copenhell, Summer Breeze Open Air, Eurosonic Noorderslag, Roskilde, Eindhoven Metal Meeting and more. Do you get nervous before shows?
Sure we do, but it’s built up energy that is quickly released and used on stage, if the nerves weren’t there we should go do something else, I believe. It’s a part of it, after a while you get used to it and get familiar with the feeling but if you are prepared and know your craft the rest comes naturally.
Six (recording) band mates, with I assume six different personalities. How do you ensure a well-functioning team within the band?
As I said before, we are all close friends and if there are clashes, we’ve learned to diffuse them pretty quickly. It has taken time and effort and even physical clashes once or twice…but with time we are getting closer to agreeing on most things.
Let’s jump into the far future. What would you like to be remembered for and what would really make you proud career-wise?
Hopefully, our work will be remembered through the years and we’ll continue to deliver music that we can be proud to release and to be remembered as professionals that took their craft seriously.
Best regards,
Aðalsteinn M / Guitarist/Lyricist of Auðn.
For more on AUÐN, visit the band’s FACEBOOK, BANDCAMP, and INSTAGRAM
Until we meet again,
