From Iceland with Power – An Interview with POWER PALADIN

Zur deutschen Version geht es hier. 

Don’t forget to check out the reports on each of the Rockharz 2024 days: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.

To boldly go where no one has been before! Or well, at least play a musical style that is commonly not associated with your country! That seems to be the motto for POWER PALADIN from Iceland, the country’s premiere Power Metal band. Naturally, I was more than intrigued and just had to ask some questions. Check out, what singer Atli and guitarist Ingi had to say when asked what sets them apart from other Power Metal bands, what they want to achieve with their music and why they always have their artwork before actually recording the album.

Huge thanks to lightinmirror.de for the awesome pictures! 

Shieldmaiden’s Voice: If you had to describe your musical choice, which would you choose?

Ingi: I have two words!

Atli: It’s three words… But ok, you go then!

Ingi: Power Metal!

Atli: Ok, last one then… mhm… Joyful!

SV: What would you say sets you apart from other bands of your genre?

Atli: Power Metal Bands nowadays lean a lot into 80s style synth sounds and disco beats. Our music is more of a throwback to Power Metal 20 years ago with little Glam Metal sprinkles on top of it, as well as some „Icelandicness“. The space that we created for ourselves is what really sets us apart. That thin line of not being too much Dungeons and Dragons, but always remembering it’s Heavy Metal first, and DnD second!

SV: You just mentioned your „Icelandicness“ and Iceland is a place of many sagas, folklore and overall fantastical things. How has that influenced influenced your sound?

Ingi: Almost not at all…It’s funny because when we speak about Fantasy from an Icelandic perspective, it’s something from our backyard that we see every day. When we talk about volcanoes and the idea of Elves in Iceland, it’s not really fantasy. Except maybe for the Elf part. What constitutes Fantasy, for us, is trees, mountains and castles. 

SV: So everything you don’t have in Iceland…? [We laugh]

Ingi: Exactly!

Atli: It’s like Ingi was saying: Fantasy to people is always something that’s not really close to you. Iceland has a lot of these elements of Fantasy, like the outlandish landscape. But for us, Fantasy is the forests of Germany and knights and castles. In Iceland, we have our thing, which is normal life, and our inspirations mostly come from Not-Iceland. 

Ingi: I do want to add something: When we play live, it does have an essence of rawness to it, which comes from playing with a lot of Black Metal bands in Iceland. So we do get some inspiration from Iceland itself, but necessarily from its nature. 

SV: What is something the listener should take away from your music? Except for the German castles that is!

Atli: When we first started this band, I wanted it to be as Heavy Metal as I want it to be. Writing the songs that we do, and perform it and everything else, it’s always my perfect vision of what Heavy Metal is and what other great bands have done before. The important takeaway is that you get what Heavy Metal and Power Metal really mean and it’s that feeling of courage and epicness blended together. 

SV: I want to focus a bit more on your debut album which was quite successful given the fact that it was your first album. What did it feel like for you, as an Icelandic band specifically, for this to have worked so well?

Ingi: We were very surprised!

Atli: When we started out, we were just a couple of nerds playing the music they wanted. We’re really just fanboys like everyone else that grew up with the music that we loved with bands like HAMMERFALL, BLIND GUARDIAN, EDGUY and STRATOVARIUS. To us, it’s always been the dream to do something like this and when the album was so successful, we couldn’t really believe it that was really all it took! Just six friends doing what they love and writing songs that they felt were a great of combination of stuff they felt was fun. We also had to switch places a bit! In the beginning, I was going to play guitar because I had never sung in my life, but we needed a Power Metal singer and there is not a lot of them in Iceland. I basically said „Fuck it, I’ll learn how to sing“ and made that happen, recorded the album and people loved it!

SV: It’s kind of obvious that I have to ask now: What are the plans for the next album? What do they look like?

Atli: We’re hard at work! Almost all of it is written and like… 50% of it recorded!

Ingi: Maybe a bit less than that because we still have to backing vocals and stuff like that. 

Atli: We have like three tracks of Vocals ready and we have between 8 to 10 songs that we have written. We have our ideas with them, so now it’s just a question of recording and producing them. That is really the hard part: Finding the time to record and produce it.

Ingi: Since we record our songs by ourselves, we have enough time to work on it. It’s a bit like doing a puzzle with trying to make everything fit together.

Atli: Totally! Five out of us six are fathers, we’re family men and so it’s a bit hard to find the hours in-between to record and to try to make it work with our personal lives! It’s going great though, we’re really excited and the next album is going to kick ass, we love it. Once it’s done, you’re going to love it too! The first thing we did though was the artwork!

SV: That is always the most important part!

Atli: No, really! That is what gives you the inspiration! For Power Metal the artwork really helps to guide you towards a theme or general idea of the album, like „What do we want it to sound like?“

SV: I think that’s really interesting because most bands I know get to the artwork once the album is ready. Aren’t you fearing that you’re forcing yourself into a pre-set frame by doing the artwork first?

Ingi: I think, we’re very bad at frames! [We laugh] If you look at our album, you’ll notice that the art doesn’t fit the music in any way. 

SV: Maybe that’s why! [We laugh]

Ingi: We’re really not worried about it, we like our art as it is!

Atli: We had started on a couple of songs, but the artwork is something I always wanted to do early because Power Metal is so much more than just the music! It’s the feeling of it all and just the whole experience of how the song is sung, how it sounds and what it really looks like. Getting artwork in early helps us considerably to get in the mood. We have an idea of what the album is going to be like and getting this as an image helps us focus on that vision. Whether it works or not, I don’t know, but we’ll see!

SV: Looking into the future, what is something you guys want to accomplish with your music?

Ingi: We want to play on a cruise!

SV: Which one?

Ingi: Any of them!

Atli: It’s always been a joke since we started out: We reached the top when we play a Metal Cruise. Honestly though, this is all we ever wanted. Our dream has always been to play at the European Metal Festivals. We’ve been flying from Iceland to visit Metal Festivals in Germany, of course we’ve all been to Wacken, we’ve been in Spain and Sweden, so it’s a big dream of ours to stand on the stages of these festivals. 

SV: Look at you go then! You’re at one of the best festivals ever! What is something you always wanted to be asked in an interview but never were so far?

Ingi: That’s a very good question! I always wanted to be asked about what our recording process is! It might not be interesting to read though…

SV: I think it can be very interesting! I’ve done articles in the past where I went into the studios and interviewed the producers about their process so maybe my audience is interested in that! That is your two minutes of fame right now, use it!

Ingi: Ok! Because we record everything by ourselves, what makes the last album so fun is the fact that everything is done by us or by friends for us. The album cover is the only thing that was done by someone outside of our friend group. We recorded everything by moving spaces in which we could record and it was mixed by a friend of ours and mastered by my friend in the Netherlands. Our lyric video for Dark Crystal was also done by a friend. We really try to keep everything in the family and it’s a very nice feeling that it’s a collaboration of many friends. 

Atli: It also shows that Iceland has a lot of Power Metal hearts even though we haven’t exported any Power Metal bands before. We’re very honored to be the first! Iceland has so many amazing bands and they are so great at being dark and evil. I never wanted to label Power Metal as „Happy Metal“, it’s more powerful and courageous.

Ingi: The Black Metal scene in Iceland has been very nice to us, too! It’s a big scene in Iceland and we still get to play at their festivals and we all like each other!

Atli: That’s what so beautiful about the Metal scene in general: Even though the genres are so different and focus on such diverse subject matters, we’re all part of the same base ideology.

SV: Unfortunately, we now come to the last question… If you could give your fans one message, what would it be?

Atli: With great Power comes great Metal!

What a relatable message! We’re going to stay in the Heavy and Power Metal lane for a bit, but will make a short trip to Sweden! Stay tuned for an amazing band and the question: Are they married, related or is it just random?