Iceage
New Brigade
Dais
2011
Rating: 6.5 cheese danishes out of 10
Let's hear it for hype, cause Iceage has been getting tons of it! Anytime a band gets a ton of hype, I have two reactions - one, I probably won't like it. Two, I've gotta hear it anyways just to be sure.
I've read in a few spots that this is "new punk", which I can only assume they mean in the same way that Refused were "new hardcore". It didn't make any sense then and it doesn't really make any sense now. I guess there are elements of punk here - the pace of the songs, their approach to writing and performing songs - but you're never going to confuse this for the Clash or the Ramones. The instrumentation is really discordant and all over the map and there are zero "hooks" to the music that I can hear...and this is a huge dis-qualifier to the "punk" moniker being attached, because most punk to me is just really aggressive/sloppy pop songs. I'd say these guys are a lot closer to Frog Eyes or the pre-industrial punk of Magazine.
Oh, by the way, this band is all a bunch of really young teenagers from Denmark. I'm not sure if that really matters, but there you go. They definitely get a thumbs up for being this musically advanced at that age, but they've still got a ways to go before they justify the hype for me.
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