I hear about new bands all the time. Emails, tweets, Facebook and good
old fashioned magazine articles (yep, I still buy magazines..don’t judge me) are just a few of the ways that news of the next hot upstart group makes it to my ears. But sometimes you hear about a band one day from one source, the next day from another source and somehow their name just keeps coming up. When that happens I get curious.
Right now Iceage is that band. The group itself is comprised of four
teenagers from Copenhagen that picked up some instruments, plugged them in and made as much of a racket as they could possibly muster.
Isn’t that how all the greatest punk bands formed?
Signed to the Danish label Escho the band has been surrounded by a
buzz that I haven’t seen since Artic Monkeys (listen up would be rock stars, if you want your band to get noticed, make sure the name of your group makes some reference to a place or time that is/was bitterly cold).
On the title track of their new album, “New Brigade” and on the scorching “White Rune” Iceage play it really old school DIY hardcore
style. While nobody is going to mistake these young dudes for a highly
skilled prog outfit, they do generate enough sheer intensity to get their screechy sonic yelp into a listenable product. The band will gain fans and haters at an equally intense clip but there won’t be any fence sitters on this one.
The music takes a little getting used to when you first hear it. The
guitars are going in every direction at once, the vocals appear to be nothing more than low, throaty ramblings that can seem impossible to decipher (hence, the Joy Division comparisons) but somehow it all comes together. I only hope that they can pull it off live because the world doesn’t need another “it” punk band with loads of praise from the critics, heavy rotation on satellite radio and no ability to pull it off live away from their hometown crowd. It’s kinda of like when I finally got see Vivian Girls at SXSW a couple of years back. Wow, what a freaking let down that was.
Iceage has the classic “we don’t really care” and “you can like us or
leave us” attitude that we have come to expect from all of our greatest punk bands. While they don’t have the cocky attitude of their fellow euro punk stalwarts Refused and The Hives, they have just as much of a chance to make a lasting mark.
