Interview with Mad Nona
After forming in late 2019, Mad Nona spent time during the pandemic putting together their self-titled debut. I recently emailed with them about their new release as well as being a band in Iceland, dealing with the pandemic and more. (note - the band’s native language is Icelandic and the interview is printed in their own words with a few tweaks from me)
Located in Reykjavik, Iceland heavily influenced by the infamous Seattle sound, the tasty riffs of blues-rock and the headbanging effect of metal, Mad Nona have been working on creating their own material. Powered by aggressive riffs, energetic vocals and powerhouse drum style Mad Nona, hit their own envisioned sound which takes you for a ride, followed with words which many can relate to. Although Mad Nona is just a toddler in a sense only formed late 2019, by local boy Arnar and UK born Thor, they had known each other for over 10 years. The pair admitted that they had not yet done shit with their musical gift and decided to team up and record an album, which they did. During Covid19, whilst that son of a b***h virus pandemic was causing lock-downs, jeopardizing everyone's health and threatening lives, the two stayed home at Fitzgerald's place. In his hallway they bounced some old riff ideas of each other, wrote new ones and slowly progressed their delicious tasty style. When they knew they had material which was not for just anyone to kick the beat to, the pair reached out to drummer Kristjan B. (artist at both Pearl and Paiste), after having his name repeatedly being brought up to their attention. Accompanied with Kristjan's stellar groove they were able to push their boundaries by twirling heavy rock towards the rhythm of blues only to top it off with the perfect amount of metal twist. With their heart and soul input, out-of-the-box song structure and audacious lyric composition they are sure they have something new and exciting to offer the modern music scene. Thor, our guitarist is a really blues orientated guitar player and he has taken a lot from the likes of Eddie Van Halen and Eric Clapton. Despite his bluesy heart Thor has always been a fan of groovy rock though. Arnar also has been blues-rock orientated liking the great Zeppelin a lot but the person who has influenced him the most is Chris Cornell. Chris´s songwriting and voice skills are something Arnar has dreamed of getting close to. Mad Nona´s powerhouse drum machine Kristjan B., is what you call a musical fanatic, loving a wide variety of genres but his admiration of metal has made him a first class metalhead. Also, Kristjan has been playing guitar for a long-time which kind of describes his love for music, he wants to do it all.
Please, above all in life; music, work or whatsoever do stay safe during this pandemic and take it very seriously because we know by experience this virus is one hell of a bastard. Also, stay true to who you are and try doing the most of what you love to do because otherwise our lives will just be a dull one and meaningless. Thirdly, if anything bad happens in your life, don't let it beat you, get back on your feet and carry on! Don´t be a victim, be a survivor! Lastly, follow us on Spotify because we are only beginning giving you guys some serious rock'n'roll!
Arnar (lead vocals/guitar) and Thor (lead guitar/vocals) met ages ago but it was only through a mutual friend that this journey started a year ago. This mutual friend approached Arnar at a bar while he was performing shitty cover songs for drunk ass people and just shouted at him: "What the hell are you doing here bro, you are wasting your goddamn vocal talent for drunk people at a pub, let's rock brother" he said. Both Arnar and Thor have been paying the bills by playing at the pubs and all that stuff but they have always wanted to create, record and share their musical gift. At that time Arnar and Thor both realized that they should give this career a chance and decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, the mutual friend as the bassist had to withdraw from the band due to personal reasons but Arnar and Thor kept on going. The pair then met Kristjan when the first Covid wave had cooled down a bit here in Iceland. We were impressed with his skills and ambition and just knew that this long hair tall dude was the one we were looking for. We have been playing together for almost 5 months now but before the launch of the band we all had been a part of the Icelandic underground rock scene for many years. Even more so Kristjan, our beloved drummer even played with Skálmöld, one of Iceland's most well-known metal bands in the summer of 2014 while their drummer, Jon Geir was recovering from surgery. Currently we are working on promoting our self-titled debut album and we will keep on going after that. Now it's time to give it all we can.
I really like the diversity of your release. There's a definite bluesy rock element throughout, and I hear a vibe in alot of the songs that reminds me of bands like Skid Row, Tesla and Motley Crue, but then “Cul de Sac” sounds alot like Alice In Chains. Is that diversity something you strive for in your sound?
Well, all of us like a wide variety of genres, which have influenced us all, and grunge is a heavy factor in that equation as well as blues and metal, so when we were strumming our acoustic guitars one night and this song partially popped up, we knew we had something to work with. The whole album was written with what sounded right to us as our guiding light and though we were not thinking about diversity too much to say the truth that song really just sounded right to us. But of course, as we were working on the song, we realized that we had a song that was a bit more relaxed so of course we wanted to showcase our softer side if we can put it like that. This album was a work of finding our sound so we guess people can expect some more grunge sounding tunes in the future.
How does your songwriting process tend to work?
Well we are going to take you through our debut album songwriting process. So, our songwriting is something we have been experimenting with since late 2019 and though our album contains 9 songs, we wrote almost 20 in 6 months' time, so we had to find our sound through trying out different things. While we were writing the songs for this album, we decided that we would not follow the so-called song-structure, instead we wanted to do what sounded right to our ears. As a result, some songs don't have a preferred verse, chorus or pre-chorus, it was the feeling and flow that led the songwriting way. As you might notice a few of our songs contain a lot of anger, well that is the result of both tragic events and past experiences as well as state of mind feelings. While recording the songs we used a drum kit software to kind of get the rhythm in shape but when Kristjan put his stellar groove into our songs, the songs just got lifted to a higher class and just to give an example he drummed "Paranoia" in a way that we had never thought of and the way he used the snare and the kick in that song just blew us away. So, it all sticks together although the songs had been written before Kristjan joined in but we believe the ratio of drums importance is 50% of all rock songs and he did an amazing job creating the beat.
Do you feel being from Iceland has impacted your music?
Well maybe in a sense. Being from Iceland in the era of grunge as young boys and having all the different rock genres played to our ears at our house ever since we were toddlers has impacted us a lot. Iceland at the time and honestly still today had only a few selections of radio stations, so what we grew up with and heard on the radio we fell in love with and that was at large scale the American rock'n'roll. So, it would be the isolation of our nation that led to us liking the kind of music we like. Also, the Icelandic underground rock scene has always been a strong one here in Iceland although it has never quite overachieved the mainstream and we have never really liked the mainstream so we have always been a part of that underground group. Therefore, being an Icelandic teenager isolated from the big world has definitely colored our view on music.
How is the music scene in Iceland and have you had an easy time finding your place in it?
The Icelandic music scene is admirably various and I would guess that compared to our population we have the highest tally of musicians in the world. We have been sticking with our style and we know what kind of music we want to create and so far, we have only heard good things about our stuff and we think we have found our place, but of course we want to share our music with the world and hopefully our debut album will unite some folks who like this kind of rock and we can work from there. Interestingly though when it comes to bands in the underground rock scene there really are not a lot of great venues to play here in Iceland. I would guess maybe 5 good ones but compared to the outer world we don´t have too much to work with. We take what we get, but in recent years some of our greatest and largest venues have been shut down. Despite that the Icelandic underground rock scene always seems to flourish due to the dedication of our fellow musicians, they don't care about the size of the venues. For instance, when Iceland Airwaves is held some bands play in book stores and even hotel lobbies. I think it’s the Icelandic way, we always keep on going.
You mention in your bio that you are dads. How has that impacted your music and what do your kids think about it?
Well, our kids are singing the songs right before they go to bed and in the car on the way to kindergarten so they have heard it quite often, and sometimes they ask us to play a certain song so the recording process has colored them and we now have a bunch of rock babies. Well, being fathers means that we have to make sure about the house´s income as well as serving our duties as role models and being there for them, so we really have had to orchestrate our time for rock a lot and it's not always easy. Even when we released the album, which was a time for a cold one both Arnar and Thor were trying to network with the kids barking up their throats for attention while Kristjan was doing the same on the road.
You have a really good acoustic cover of Motley Crue’s “Live Wire” up on bandcamp. Do you think we might see more covers down the road or maybe acoustic versions of some of your songs?
If there's anything we love besides groovy rock/blues/metal/grunge it's the beauty of acoustic guitar, so we will definitely work on a few of those in the future! Having been inspired a lot by the infamous grunge scene we will surely be looking to do one of those shows like Chains and Nirvana did. Who doesn’t remember Nirvana: MTV unplugged! Man, we would love something like that.
I know your vocalist Arnar recently tested positive for Covid-19. Hopefully he’s doing ok. Besides his illness has the pandemic had any impact on the band?
Arnar is recovering quite well and actually, Covid was one of the main reasons we went ahead and made this album. You see, if not for Covid then the pair probably wouldn't have been able to find their style and record this album so fast. During the Covid pandemic we stayed at Fitzgeralds place, progressed our style, wrote some riffs and also took what had been in our mind for a long time. Songs like “Rock'n'roll” and “Tornado Jane” were just collecting dust in our bedroom drawers, and were taken out, adjusted a bit and recorded. Meanwhile “King of the Hill” and “Cul de Sac” were just a single riff idea. The others came with weeks and months of working on our style. So, although the Covid pandemic has been a thing nobody could have wished for, it kind of got us to start doing what we love and what we are good at! Regarding release plans we have not been able to share our music due to the Covid pandemic yet but we simply can't wait. On the other hand, it means we have to do as much as we can online and try to reach out with our music and personality. We will be looking for ways to create videos in the upcoming weeks, but this era we live in requires a lot of innovative thinking ways in trying to connect our music with future listeners and fans. It won't be a long time till we release our first single for our next album that's for sure. We want to create more and more for ourselves and our fellow citizens of the world.
Is there anything else you would like to share with readers?
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