New Brigade
The noise-lovin’ What’s Your Rupture? label brings us the guitar ... er, eruptions of Denmark’s youthful (teenaged) Iceage, with a U.S. debut entitled *New Brigade*. Fans of tough, abrasive punk — with a tolerance for undercurrents of noise, no wave and thrash — will want to put headphones on and clear the room of breakable items; songs like “New Brigade,” “Total Drench,” and “You’re Blessed” are fueled by semi-automatic drum parts and sparking guitars that throw enough heat to melt a Danish winter. Other tunes, like “White Rune” and “Collapse” hint at the earliest jolts of England’s great post-punk band Wire, tapping into the tangled roots of noise and art-damaged punk. Singer Elias Rønnenfelt intones the lyrics in English, barking in a flat, brooding expression of dissatisfaction, and there is a vortex of visceral, emotional energy at the music’s core. “Broken Bone” and “Eyes” pulse with raw energy, landing like a Fugazi punch wrapped in shoegazing softness; did original punk ever feel this good when it landed square in your gut? We think not. These kids are something to watch.
On their debut LP, this young band from Denmark mixes post-punk clang and goth atmosphere, serving it up with a massive dose of addictive energy.
It’s hard not to think of Sweden’s Refused when pondering the phenomenon of Denmark’s Iceage. Both are Scandinavian. Both were formed when their members were in their teens. Both offer bracing, radical, yet fundamentally faithful reinterpretations of their chosen genres. But while Refused deconstructed post-hardcore,…
For their debut, New Brigade, Iceage come furiously out of the gate, combining the bare-bones art punk popularized by Wire and Warsaw in the '70s with an ‘80s hardcore punk spirit. The songs on New Brigade are excellent -- quick and succinct blasts that never last longer than three minutes -- as the jagged guitar parts of Johan and Elias tear along in front of the ragged rhythm section attack of Dan and Jakob. “Total Drench,” “Collapse,” and “Count Me In” practically fall apart in reckless abandon, slow down for a short breather, and then, with a four-count drumstick click, whip back into a wild fit. Because Iceage’s material is recorded raw, and devoid of traditional verse/chorus structures, hooks are often hard to locate amidst the fractured structures and dissonant chords, but they exist. One of Iceage's best tricks is their ability to turn atonal tension into a melody, especially when Elias alternates from talk-singing lazily to shouting passionately in “Broken Bone” and “You’re Blessed.