Think of Scandinavian metal and it's usually a load of old murderous cliches like church burning, blokes wearing Alice Cooper's cast-offs and calling themselves Count Dickhead and the like. If it wasn't for the actual death involved, it would nearly always be cause for serious music fans to laugh like drains.
MINUS, though, while hailing from Iceland, dressing like Axl Rose is the ultimate rocker to emulate and having a bassist who loves to lick the neck of his bass while playing (baby), are cut from different, entirely superior cloth. Now several albums in, with "Halldor Laxness" they have made a record that actually makes a case for Scando-metal as a credible art form.
Mind you, while much of the album could comfortably satiate the need of the discerning metal fan, it must be said the band Minus most remind this writer of when they're at full tilt is Killing Joke at their heaviest. Both of the opening tracks "Boys Of Winter" and "Who's Hobo" are reminiscent of KJ'S recent, eponymous album with Dave Grohl and feature stark, ritualistic riffing, complex time signatures, Bjossi's animalistic, gasometer toplling drumming and Krummi's strychnine-gargling howl. It's all rather fetching too.
Elsewhere, their diamond-hard power whips up an awesome fury on tracks like "Flophouse Nightmare" - where a Sonic Youth-style dynamic squeezes its' way into the powderkeg - and "Here Comes The Night", which revels in its' sawn-off steath riffing, heroic tambourines and the sound of Krummi actually SINGING the mesmeric "I sleep on a concrete bed, wake up and see all the long faces" chorus. That might not scan too well, but it's excellent, provocative stuff on record: as is the cautionary "My Name Is Cocaine", where Krummi warns: "I'm more valued than diamonds, more treasured than gold/ use me just once and you too will be sold" over predatory, bad dream riffing.
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Occasionally, things get a mite sludgy for comfort. The likes of "Angel In Disguise" and "I Go Vertigo" are all very well, but make Obituary sound tuneful by comparison. Much better are the tracks where Minus experiment with poppier textures like on the single "The Long Face", which is insidious, lighter and even allows a textural sax line into the melee and "Insomniac" where Bjossi inserts a hi-hat-riding disco beat and the band sign off with a proto-dub/ phased finale. Equally cool is the fact they hand final track "Last Leaf Upon The Tree" over to Queen Adreena's Katie Jane Garside, who adds her creepy, little-girl-lost vox to the slow, warped space blues to great effect.
Minus, then, are certainly making a credible fist of this Scando hard-rock business, and "Halldor Laxness" very much deserves our respect. I don't actually know what the title means in Icelandic, but in English it roughly translates as 'bitchriffin', powersmokin', necklickin' rawkenrawllll'. In short, just how we like it.
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