Metalhead (Original Soundtrack)

Cult film Metalhead’s Original Soundtrack by Pétur Ben out on vinyl in December The 2013 Icelandic film Metalhead by Ragnar Bragason tells the story about a young girl, Hera, in 1990s Iceland caught between the life that took her brother and her own inability to strike out on her own. In her grief, she finds solace in metal and dreams of making her own music. The film’s highly praised soundtrack by Pétur Ben will finally be available on vinyl for the first time. Pétur Ben reminisces his past with metal and the making of the soundtrack: “My first compositional attempts happened in my teens when I was in a death metal band in the early nineties. I was just fifteen, but I think in a way it gave me a real window into the film’s time and scenery. In many ways I was like Hera. An isolated kid finding solace in music although her situation is rural, but I was in the middle of this scene in Reykjavik. Back then I had Entombed, Godflesh, Morbid Angel and a few other records on vinyl and the rest was just dubbed from my friends’ albums to cassettes. In 2012 though when I wrote this music, I had just released my album God’s Lonely Man. I was heavily influenced by drone music like Gerard Grisey and contemporary indie bands like Women and Swans. I was also listening to The Doors, The Stooges and a whole lot of Velvet Underground, so basically psychedelic, kraut, drone stuff that we could call minimalistic rock music.” Talking about Svarthamar, the film’s most well-known song, Pétur adds “I wanted it to be very tone centric but with hints of the Lydian mode that has this distinct Icelandic pagan folk sound.