This duo named after one of Iceland’s biggest active volcanoes is the result of musical cooperation between Einar Thorberg Guðmundsson (multi-instrumentalist and vocal) and Guðmundur Óli Pálmason (visual artist and former drummer of Sólstafir), a collaboration that started at the end of 2015 in Reykjavík. Einar and Guðmundur had known each other for decades and worked together on several other projects, including Potentiam, a black metal band that became a cult project in the Icelandic underground scene.
In January 2016, Katla. released the first song from the EP entitled “Ferðalok 7”. And just a year away, the duo released their debut album, “Móðurástin”, under the well-known German label Prophecy Productions, a material received with enthusiasm by both specialty critics and fans.
Katla quickly came to the public’s attention and gained its appreciation due to its strong compositions, with atmospheric and melancholy notes which masterfully combine complex riffs, with deeply penetrated sounds of dark influences, which hypnotize the listener. The lyrics of the songs tell the story of those living in a country of contrasts, a territory in which fire and ice coexist, and winters full of darkness are filled by summers with the sun in the middle of the night. All the powerful and contradictory experiences of the people in the country of contrasts are intensely expressed on a lyrical and sonic level in the Icelandic duo’s songs prepared, like the eponymous volcano, to erupt in each of the live shows, introducing the audience into a trance woven by sounds, atmospheric and deeply dark.
