Minus vocalist Krummi has revealed to Rock Sound why it's taken the Icelandic post-hardcore band four years to make a follow-up to the their last album 'Halldor Laxness'. After years of rock 'n' roll mayhem, he says, he suffered a “semi-nervous-breakdown” before pulling himself together and making new album 'The Great Northern Whalekill'.
“When we came off tours there was still excessive drinking and drug binging,” he says. “We did it because we were young and we wanted to have a lot of fun. Coming from Iceland we're all kind of semi-alcoholic. But when we came home it was really hard. Our personal lives were a disaster. And after a while you tend to fight each other. I had a semi-nervous break-down. I had to stop drinking so much and doing all that stuff and just come back to Earth. That's what I did. On my own. I didn't need no rehab, just something to do.”
Last time around guitarist Frosti, who's now left the band, said that one day Minus would go into rehab together and then do a sober album. Krummi says they haven't gone quite that far, yet.
“He was always talking shit like that!” he says indulgently. “He wasn't even the one who was drinking that much.”
Bizarrely one of the things Krummi's done since recording 'The Great Northern Whalekill' is taking the lead role in an Icelandic production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. As somebody who comes from a religious background he says the show's made a big impression on him.
“I'm Catholic,” he says, “and my mother's very religious and I went to Catholic school and everything. Jesus has always been a big part of my life. It's a story to teach people about life and about betrayal and love. I think that's the most intriguing story of all the religious stories. It's saying we're not alone even though we know deep inside that we are all alone. But there's something bigger than just us. I'm no Jesus freak but there's a comfort feeling of having faith. You'd feel kind of shabby going: 'I don't believe in anything!' I think that's kind of naive. Some people think it's naïve being religious but that's just personal. I don't believe in Adam and Eve or Noah's Ark or Jesus, even. I believe in the spirituality of things. Of faith.”
Unsurprisingly Krummi, who grew up believing in the rock 'n' roll myth of the debauched artist, can see some parallels between the Jesus of Lloyd Webber's musical and the classic rock star.
“I think many great artists or rockstars or superstars, centuries ago would maybe have been prophets,” he says. “But now there's so much of everything that there's really no space for people to listen to each other now.”
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