Further Information

Graveslime

Icelandic sludge rock trio Graveslime is made up with Aðalsteinn Möller (Alli), Kolbeinn Hugi Höskuldsson (Kolli) and Ólafur Steinsson (Óli). The band spur into being out of Kolbeinn’s epiphany in early 2001 which whispered firm but gently: “There must be a band called Graveslime!”. Instantly Kolbeinn called his good friend and band mate Alli to start the band. Kolbeinn and Alli previously played in the notorious punk trio Þrír Hressir and sludge rock supergroup Thundergun.

While seeking the right drummer for this project the twosome started jamming on one of the most stellar songs of them all, “Chariots of Fire” by Vangelis. After few weeks of playing as a twosome and with no luck finding the right one for the drum stool they turned onto a fellow rehearsal space mate Óli who had no drumming experience whatsoever but he owned a kit and with tons of patience and stamina they made a drummer.

The first Graveslime song was “The Punch Fucking Drunk Fuck and The Fucking Goat” and was the fruit of relentless practicing that made one of the most odd drummer Iceland underground music saw of the era. The song also set the bar for what was to come the songs on their only album, a boundlessly heavy sludge rock euphoria with incomprehensible timing and yet some pristine and melodic earworms.

Roughness & Toughness

After months of rehearsing and writing songs, the Graveslime locomotive was running, and abundance of sludgy riffs boiled out of their creative well.

Graveslime played few but mostly successful shows (often jokingly pretending to be another band on the bill) in the summer of 2001 and the band was offered a warmup slot for American instrumental rock trios Trans Am and The Fucking Champs at Gaukur Á Stöng in Reykjavík. This show was a pivotal turning point for the band after their brief encounter with The Fucking Champs’s guitarist Tim Green who ran (and still does) his recording studio Louder Studios in San Francisco. This legendary recording engineer of American underground music had recorded bands that inspired Graveslime, including Melvins, Bikini Kill, Comets On Fire, KARP, Sleater-Kinney, Unwound etc.

Shortly after their brief introduction to Tim they decided to reach out to him and see if they could convince him to record their forthcoming album in Reykjavík the following year. Tim’s answer was a clear yes, but not knowing that Reykjavík did not have a single analogue recording studio running at the time, he sent them a long list of gear they had to assemble to make the recording feasible. Not a simple task in a small city in Iceland back then that had ditched analogue recording gear for ProTools and similar digital recording devices.

It was decided to use the studio Veðurstofan, that was at the time run by the band Stjörnukisi. The studio was on the second floor but the building had a elevator, of which was a big plus.

Graveslime members managed to track down an old dusty 24 track tape machine in one place and a vast mixing board that belonged to Icelandic techno soul outfit GusGus. Countless hours went by turning, the now defunct, Veðurstofan Studio into an analog studio with borrowed mics, amps, patch-bays with broken connections and a tape machine that hadn’t been used for years. While Tim and Óli worked on the equipment, Kolbeinn and Alli strolled to the bar Sirkus and wrote down the final lyrics to the most recently composed songs.

The end and a new beginning

It all came together after some hard work from all involved. Some equipment broke down along the way and industrial welding was involved. Some equipment even went missing. More things bought or borrowed from various resources and so on.

Base tracks were recorded live together in the same room and later some overdubs and vocals got recorded. All this accomplished in just seven days.

Tim captured perfectly the raw yet pristine sound of the band. It was heavy and slimy but also clean and pretty when needed.

After the recordings, the members of Graveslime were in high spirits, being well- practiced and with the album's material ready to go. The band played numerous concerts with bands of that time, and there was a strong undercurrent that led to the band being booked to play three concerts during the yearly Culture Night in Reykjavik.

Early in the day, the band played at the record store Japis on Laugarvegur. Some of their friends were inside the store while the rest of the people settled for watching the sweaty backside of Óli through the windows as he pounded the drums. This clogged up the main shopping street Laugarvegur and made it to the news.

After the concert at Japis, the next show took place at the store Skaparinn. Since the band was playing at three concerts, they made the fateful decision not to play their regular set but to create an improvised drone noise instead. The store was a cube- shaped concrete space with almost nothing on the walls and corners, so the acoustics in the room were extremely loud (even by the band's standards, which were usually set loud). The noise was so intense that most of the audience left the store and stood outside, watching through the windows. The noise was heard throughout downtown Reykjavik. That is probably banned today.

After the gig, the hearing of Kolbeinn, the singer and guitarist, was literally gone.

The ringing in his ears was so loud that nearby bystanders could hear it.

Despite this, the band managed to get through the last concert of the evening, which was held at the venue 22, in front of a full house, alongside Brain Police and others.

Doctors told Kolbeinn that his hearing would likely never return, and in the aftermath, Kolbeinn chose to try living in complete silence for six months and consumed gargantuan amounts of Gingko Biloba roots in the hope that his hearing would return (it worked!)

As a result, the band quieted down despite never formally disbanding.

The album was released on CD, but nothing was done to celebrate its release – no concerts, no listening parties, very limited promotions.

Although the band had said goodbye to performing live, the echo of their music resonated through their rare album, which somehow reached the ears of a new generation.

Now, 20 years later, the band has finally come full circle and plans to hold a release concert, giving this remarkable album the farewell it deserves.

The Double Vinyl

The original CD version of the album is long sold out, and it wasn't until recently that the band members decided to make the album available on streaming platforms. For 20 years, the album got to be popular, and the reputation grew like an underground mold.

Although the album has been unavailable all this time, there have always been regular inquiries about whether the material should be reissued.

It's rare for such interest to exist 20 years after a release, especially for such a small independent band.

So the opportunity was seized on the 20th anniversary of the original release of Roughness and Toughness, to release the album in a double delicious vinyl edition.

66 minutes of Graveslime served on 2 slime colored vinyl platters . The unusual cover of the CD, which was inspired among other things by an old soup packet where an unspecified abomination was left to rot for two weeks in a beautiful porcelain bowl, has always been an indispensable part of the album.

Therefore, the original designer of the album cover, Kristján Freyr Einarsson, was brought in to recreate the cover for the deliciously large format of the double vinyl record.

The name of the band and the dolphin in the artwork and the music tie everything together, and it is a pleasure to announce that this new vinyl release edition features four times the number of dolphins as the original CD release.

The album, with all its history, beautiful design and extraordinary songwriting, is therefore a unique artifact in Icelandic music history.