Beneath The Skin - Of Monsters And Men (2015)

I often start thinking to myself when I listen to Icelandic music that Iceland is the most influential island nation on world music. Of course, then Jamaica and Ireland immediately leap to mind. But then I change into thinking that per capita Iceland still has a case. There are only about 400,000 people in Iceland, and it seems like every one of them is in a band, making film music, working as a concert pianist, or just being Bjork.

Of Monsters And Men are not reinventing the wheel in any of this. They aren’t the trailblazers that Bjork or Sigur Ros have been, but they did have a massive smash in their debut album, My Head Is An Animal. They wanted to prove that the first foray wasn’t just a flash in the pan, and with this one they’ve proven it quite well.

There are half a dozen bands that make similarly muscular pop rock from this same era including Muse, Snow Patrol, and The Killers (all three of whom have worked with this album’s producer, Rich Costey). But what the band might lack in sonic originality they more than make up for in energy, lyrics, and general thematic expansiveness.

OMAM manages to be whimsical while still keeping some spookiness in the stories. The alternating male and female vocals from Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Þórhallsson give each track some unique flavor.

It ends up being bright and shiny, but in a chilling kind of way that I imagine if a pretty apt metaphor for living near the Arctic Circle.