Iceland: Home of Hot Springs, geysers, active volcanoes and stunning landscapes. Also home of the weird: múm, Sigur Rós and Björk who all make music as idiosyncratic as their geography. So where else might you expect to find the monks of the Dead Temple; Nonni Dead, Henrik Björnsson and Ryan Carlson Van Kriedt but here?

Dead Skeletons are hard to pin down musically. Snippets of pop, trance, alternative, shoegaze and rockabilly can all be heard bubbling away beneath the surface. But the band's overriding character is dark, gothic and shamanistic. 'Ljósberrin' is an example of this confluence of influences harnessing everyone from Sigur Rós to Rammstein to New Model Army to Public Image Limited to Fields of the Nephilim. 'Dead Magick I' would be a dance track if not for the lack of all consuming kick drum while 'Live!/Lifôu!' has the urgent slightly unnerving beat akin to New Order with vocals to match.

Rhythms and melodic elements are deliberately repetitive in order to build up a soundscape that you can step inside and experience for yourself without the distraction of words. And when words do come they are low key, buried in the track. 'Ask Seek Knock' has aspects of The Brian Jones Massacre, The Velvet Underground, Slowdive and The Stone Roses. Many of the tracks are long and trance-like with the shortest coming in at four and a half minutes. 'Dead Mantra' is the longest at just under 9 minutes of cyclical sound and is an apt opening track considering the band's persona of occult mysticism.

To say that Dead Skeletons are an acquired taste would be an understatement. But not everyone is partial to svid either so it's not that surprising. In the skewed world of Dead Skeletons one man's poison is another man's meat.

http://deadskeletons.com