Music

Godchilla Is Iceland’s Weirdest Surf Sludge Band

​One of the strangest bands I saw (amidst a weekend’s worth of overall extreme weirdness) the first time I went to Iceland’s Eistnaflug Festival can really be described in no other way than “surf sludge.” If Dick Dale up and defected to Iceland and started a band with a bunch of dudes who worship Buzzoven and Crowbar, Godchilla would be the mind-melting result. 

Seeing them live was a trip, but now that they’ve resurfaced with a new video (heralding the upcoming release of a new full-length, Hypnopolis) I’ve been fully transported back to the land of WTF. The video was originally premiered at an art gallery in downtown Reykjavik, but you can soak in its online debut right here. 

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 As one might expect (or at least ascertain from the creepy doll masks they’re wearing in their press photo) it’s reeeeeaaaaaal fuckin’ weird (but does include some rather lovely shots of Reykjavik). The band described the video to me thusly, so of course I agreed to premiere it:

​”A five-minute journey into the uncanny valley of paper mache dolls, culminating in a ritual of ego death in the plastic dockside heterotopia of Bryggjuhverfi, Grafarvogur.​ With our friend/graphic designer/grandabróðir, Ingi Kristján, we made a video for the song “Bum A Smoke, Trash A Car” in an ode to juvenile delinquency, being bored, and the Satan-in-itself that doing illogical “bad” stuff is, and to try to spice up the boredom of being stuck in your tracks in a safe and logical life. We made the song, and got rid of the Satanic energy risen out of the aforementioned stagnation by doing unboring stuff—that is, making doll versions of ourselves, doing weird stuff with them, and then destroying them. On camera.”

Kim Kelly is dreaming of Iceland on Twitter​.