Potentiam

Avant garde metal from Iceland, focusing on song structure that shapes and shifts from note to note, steering away from much of the norms in the metal world while still holding onto tradition.

Potentiam was born in '97 when Eldur and Forn joined forces.Eldur had been writing material for his band THULE which was formed in '95.Forn started a project on his own in '96. Eldur joined him and few months after that,G.Ó.Pálmason from Sólstafir came along and Hel was born.Hel recorded 4 songs in a low budget studio.Soon after that,Eldur and Forn decided to work together and form a project with deeper perspectives since neither Thule or Hel could be considered as something pure and original.Potentiam was given birth in September '97. Ten tracks were written and recorded in a small private studio (which later got the name studio Hel) ,and released early in February '98.One track from Hel, Hrafnaþing ,was taken and reproduced for this demo. In march,that same year, Thule broke up because of some serious lack of commitment. Eldur took the Thule style a little further and formed his own solo/side project later in '98 called Curse. The Potentiam demo was entitled "Bálsýn" and was released in only 50 copies.One of those copies went to Avantgardemusic/Wounded Love rec.. in Italy and they showed interest right away and offered Potentiam a record deal.The debut album was also entitled "Bálsýn",with 7 songs from the demo put into it plus 2 new ones.G.Ó. Pálmasson joined Potentiam again as a session drummer to record this album.It was released in August '99. After this release,a long dead period came along while Potentiam was developing and looking for a drummer to help them out. Few drummers were tried out but it wasn't until in September '00 that Potentiam finally found an excellent drummer that joined in for their next album " Orka I Myrkri ". Right after the studio recordings of that album he left the band to focus entirely on Changer, his main band. Another sad period was ahead for Potentiam as they almost gave up hope of ever finding a new drummer on this small Icelandic soil. But in the summer of '02 they discovered a drummer from an Icelandic Blackmetal newcomer called Myrk. This drummer, having the same name as the earlier one, left the band in late 2003. Potentiam tried to get back on track but was having a hard time recruiding a dedicated drummer. The band was inactive almost the whole year of 2004. It wasn't until in the beginning of 2005 that G.Ó. Pálmason joined the band once again that things started to look promising for the future. The band has now written a new material and will be entering studio this year with a totally different musical style from their earlier work. It shall be interesting to see how critics will try to label the band this time. So far, Potentiam has been called heavy metal, gothic metal, black/death metal, dark metal, suicide metal, avantgarde metal ect.

Potentiam has played live only 5 times through almost 8 years. This is mainly because we have had various problems working with drummers. Iceland's population is aprox. 290.000 so as you can imagine, the metal scene is small. Still we have had 5 drummers through the years, one of them is back with us again and we will be ready to perform live again very soon. All our gigs has been in the Reykjavik area and we have always enjoyed our performances. Our best one was when we had actors on stage performing a dark ritual right before we appeared on stage. We recorded a intro especially for this event which has never been heard again.

Emperor, Mayhem, Metallica, My Dying Bride, Entombed, Ved Buens Ende, Anathema + tons more.