Under an assortment of different monikers and styles, ethereal blackened death metal outfit Zhrine have been a staple of the local extreme metal diet since the new wave of Icelandic Death Metal first started beating these rocky shores.
After a lengthy absence from the scene, the band, who many thought to be buried under the sands of time, recently dropped a dandruff bomb on unsuspecting headbangers worldwide when they announced their signing to leading European extreme metal label Season of Mist.
Yesterday, these metal masters announced that their label debut Unortheta will be dropping on April 8th, and released a song from the album, called “Spewing Gloom”. You can hear it below.
The Eistnaflug Festival next summer may very well be your first chance to catch this Phoenix rising from the ashes. We lobbed a few questions at frontman Þorbjörn Steingrímsson about the news and what’s coming up.
Tell us about the new album.
The theme of the new album is basically how the human race is destroying itself and everything around it. That’s our whole theme. It is called Unortheta.
Can you tell us how Zhrine got started?
Well the band started as Gone Postal in 2007. But we then changed our name to Zhrine as our music changed. We started playing more black metal and we wanted to start again because Gone Postal represented death metal and being more brutal, you know, but Zhrine is more, uh, “music” maybe. [Laughs] So we brought this new album under a new name.
What was the change in music?
When we started, we were playing more death metal whereas now it’s more atmospheric.
Didn’t you used to be called Shrine? Not Zhrine?
Yeah, we did, but we changed it basically just due to copyright laws, you know, with our record deal.
New record deal? That’s so exciting.
Yeah, it’s with Season of Mist. The new album will be released on April 8th.
What is it like working with two members in international bands (Guitarist Nökkvi Gylfason is also a member of Svartidauði and Stefán Ari Stefánsson bangs the drums in Vintage Caravan)?
It really sucks. [Laughs] No, well, because of that we haven’t really done much recently. I was studying abroad in China for a year so that put the whole thing on stop and then when I came home Stebbi had just joined The Vintage Caravan.
We just had our first practice in 1.5 years about a month ago. We always have to squeeze in our time. It’s hard when they are always abroad.
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Check out their new song “Spewing Gloom” below:
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