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Of Monsters Men interview: ‘She’s called Lola. She’s possessed, she’s been f***ing with us’

A s I shuffle out of the airport terminal in Iceland, the boundless horizon is a wake-up call. Who knew there was this much sky? Trundling across moss-dotted, ancient lava plains en route to Reykjavik, my under-slept mind reaches for scraps of Nordic folklore: elves, dwarves; the harrowing, troll sex scene from Swedish fantasy film Border … then we pass Taco Bell, and I’m back in reality… until the bus sweeps by a coastal inlet and time halts as inky mist-veiled mountains rise from the ocean. No wonder this sublime landscape seeps into the sound of every musician hailing from Europe’s northernmost nation.Of Monsters and Men are no exception. The first Icelandic band to breach one billion Spotify plays, the five-piece litter their first two albums, My Head is an Animal (2011) and Beneath the Skin (2015), with talking trees, mountain sounds, running wolves, heavy stones and vengeful seas as well as spectral brethren – your howling ghouls and so on. Within an hour of reaching Reykjavik, I’m headed back out of town to meet Nanna Bryndis Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar (Raggi) Þorhallsson, the group’s lead songwriters and vocalists, to discuss their kaleidoscopic third record, Fever Dream . Ten minutes later, the bemused taxi driver pulls up in front of a nondescript, two-storey building. Briefly stunned by the intensity of the light, I perch on a springy verge, detoxing London lungs with pristine air, before poking my head through an open door to see flight cases lining a corridor.Nanna appears. She’s a tall, striking figure, insouciant, dressed head to toe in black, bar the bold, white graphics hand-painted onto her artisan jeans. She leads me into the band’s home-away-from-home. Turns out the building, which Of Monsters and Men have built up from a barren rehearsal space into a high-end recording studio over six years, used to be a school. Several artists share the floor above. It gets pretty lively, apparently. We enter what used to be a teen hang-out room to see Raggi, looking like an off-duty pop producer in a loose-fitting, blue jacket tending to a gurgling coffee machine. His aunt attended this school. Unfortunately, the whole building might soon be torn down. Neither seems fazed, maybe because they’re keen to move wholesale into “pure countryside” – or perhaps they just bury feelings deep here.From extras.The band’s whiplash-inducing rise kicked off in 2011 with the runaway success of jangly, ear-burrowing anthem “Little Talks”. Since then their rousing, stadium-friendly blend of folk, rock and pop has seen them pack out everything from toilet venues to concert halls, including key stages at the likes of Coachella and Glastonbury. They even cameoed in two episodes of series six of Game of Thrones. Those stacks of kit in the hall have freshly arrived from New York, where, styled out in red and black, they performed Fever Dream ’s major hit single, “Alligator” – a rampant banger about self-empowerment – live on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon . Still, while they take their work crazy seriously... the attendant fuss and even themselves? Not so much.“That could be a bit Icelandic,” says Nanna, “Like: ‘Moving on – what’s next?’ We’ve also always wanted to underplay it a little.” Raggi continues: “It is weird being successful in Iceland. Everyone’s so equal here that you never think you’re bigger than anyone else. If you meet someone famous, they’re your equal, which is good, it’s healthy.”Nanna: “It gives you space…”Raggi: “… to just be yourself.”After 10 years of being bandmates, it’s hardly a shock their sentences frequently intertwine. With the high summer sun beaming through the window, the pair prove to be great company as they reveal how the dynamic, tour de force that is Fever Dream came to be. At the start, all they knew was that they wanted to do everything differently.