Meet Zhrine, Iceland’s Latest Impressive Metal Export

Iceland sure has been making itself known on the global metal circuit lately, hasn’t it? It makes sense that the island of just 320,000 inhabitants would be ripe for the metal types — it’s geographically isolated, it’s really dark half the year, its inhabitants share a lineage with Scandinavians and volcanoes are very metal — but, until the past five years or so, you barely ever heard Icelandic metal bands spoken about outside the country’s borders.

All that’s changed now. Three years ago Kim Kelly wrote a piece for us about Icelandic metal, and just a couple of weeks later I visited the country myself and witnessed it first hand. The Eistnaflug festival has become an international destination, while bands like Ophidian I, Momentum, Naðra (all featured on this site) and of course Solstafir have gained wider notoriety over the past few years. There’s even been a cinematic release about a young Icelandic metalhead struggling with her inner turmoil.

All that’s a very long-winded way of saying you should listen to Zhrine (formerly Shrine, and formerly formerly Gone Postal), the latest molten band to emerge from Iceland’s piping hot geothermal stores. Their debut album, Unortheta, will come out on Season of Mist worldwide later this year, and they’ve got a new track called “Spewing Gloom” that’s streaming over at Decibel right now. Zhrine are very much from the Ulcerate/Dysrythmia/Gorguts school of skronky, churning, technical death metal with a touch of black metal thrown in, so fans of those bands should be very, very happy with what they’re hearing here.

Unortheta comes out April 8th on Season of Mist. You can pre-order it here.