2011: Iceage - New Brigade

Somehow TMT managed to turn a blind eye last year on one of the most exciting/ass-kicking punk bands of 2011. Without a review or a spot on our year end list (a travesty, I know), Iceage has been painfully absent from our site and now it’s time to remedy that. Hailing from Copenhagen, Denmark, Iceage is composed of four angry dudes that are hardly out of their teens but already know their way around a mean hook and a fuzz petal or two or three. Inheriting quite a bit from the godfathers of furious sub-two-minute post-punk, Wire, their debut album New Brigade packs as much anger and ruptured eardrums into 25 minutes as any piece of music I’ve ever heard.

Most of their tunes are merely short bursts, maybe one or two riffs repeated a couple times, but a mix of scathingly raw production and an embrace of some gnarly guitar noise adds layers to otherwise stark songs. The Steve Albini-ish production leaves almost all the bands energy intact, and whatever loss of fidelity is suffered is more than made up for by how immediate and large all the instruments sound — especially the guitar and drums. “Broken Bone” opens with a guitar that is hammered out until the strings sound like they’re about to break, a typical moment of highly wound tension where the band thrives somewhere between a new level of intensity and falling apart completely.

But sheer noise wouldn’t mean shit (or a spot as my favorite of the year) without something more to grasp onto — something that worms its way into your head. Surprisingly, many of New Brigade’s memorable hooks are found in the vocals and Iceage’s choruses can be downright anthemic. “You’re Blessed,” “White Rune,” and more or less all their songs forgo screams for whats best described as a deep below, carrying as much anger as pure shouts would but with loads more expression and melody. With these guys and Lower releasing debuts from Denmark in the past year, the post-punk scene has gotten a bit angrier and much much more exciting.

DeLorean

There’s a lot of good music out there, and it’s not all being released this year. With DeLorean, we aim to rediscover overlooked artists and genres, to listen to music historically and contextually, to underscore the fluidity of music. While we will cover reissues here, our focus will be on music that’s not being pushed by a PR firm.

Most Read



Etc.