7. Kveikur / Sigur Rós

It is difficult to discuss a band when you cannot understand what they are saying.  Perhaps that is why writers typically describe Sigur Ros as a sonic experience: eerie, alien, otherwordly, and yes, beautiful.  Because the only signifiers are the sounds themselves (including Jonsi Birgisson's voice), the emotional and aesthetic depth of the music can only be described by the varying and subjective degrees of how you feel.  Listening to the band is nothing short of tapping into your primal responses.

For The D Man, no other music makes me feel this way--an array of emotions spanning perceived epochs, like watching a fast-motion camera capturing skies that will never repeat themselves again, or  observing a thousand moons rising with a thousand turns of the earth.  Their best tracks conjure up untold ages of men, ghosts, summers, winters, suns.

On 2008's Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, the band's quirky post-rock migrated to verdant, orchestral, tribal-thumping places, which subsequently led to the colorful sound of Jonsi's feather-clad solo album. But the band retreated into the barely-there sonics of 2012's Valtari, a lovely but largely ambient affair.  Compared to Valtari's ethereal droning, Kveikur is the equivalent of bone-crunching black metal, undoubtedly the band's most aggressive work to date.

"Brennisteinn" is the heaviest song Sigur Ros has recorded.  The song's bass-lines are barges breaking through north Atlantic ice, and its guitars are oceanic squalls dispensing heavy rains.  "Hrafntinna" chimes with a foreboding, subterranean fury, a racket of perfectly placed dissonance and Jonsi's bow-played guitar.  "Isjaka" competes with the band's best tracks, a towering grey sky spiraling into the majesty of warped strings.

Like the Danish band Mew, Sigur Ros implements hints of Scandinavian metal, and perhaps with the loss of founding keyboardist Kjarten Sveinsson, the band focuses on their rediscovered rhythm section, taking firm command of the harder-hitting material and merging it with their haunting melodies.  The result is a rattling rock album with driving bass-lines and uncanny drum patterns, a reinvigoration of their sound that stands among their best work.

Is there a non-English speaking band that has captivated Western listeners like these Icelanders?  None come to mind.  It has always been difficult to pin down outside influences in the band's catalog, let alone find a contemporary with similar success crossing the language divide.  The band has bridged the gulf by the hurtling force of their imaginative creations, and their remarkable success can only be explained by their emotional resonance and peculiar-sounding genius.