10 Best Experimental Rock Songs Of All Time
3. Dead Skeletons - Dead Mantra
A tune called “Dead Mantra” by a band called Dead Skeletons, whose logo is a metal-signifying skull, doesn’t sound like the most jolly of affairs, but this cult hit is actually a purposefully life affirming, remarkably catchy piece of music.
It’s an exercise in texture over melody, with the music itself about as straightforward as it gets. One chord, some walls of fuzzy, phased guitar, and a single sentence, the titular mantra, repeated incessantly in Icelandic, German, and English: “He who fears death cannot enjoy life”.
That’s the message imparted by Dead Skeletons (their frontman, Jón Sæmundur Auðarson, has been living with HIV since 1994), and the music conveys that simple but vital lesson in the most compelling of terms. It’s psychedelic and absorbing songwriting, a track that doesn’t grow in itself but will grow on you as it burrows into your psyche.
On “Dead Mantra”, Dead Skeletons make so much more out of a single idea than a lot of bands do in their whole careers. When you’re dealing with something profound in an effective manner, it can’t help but hit home.