Tag: band

They'd hate me for saying it, but Danish four-piece Iceage are the sexiest thing to happen to punk in forever. The band play loud and fast, with the violent, trance-like body-flinging of frontman Elias Bender Rnnenfelt seeming the all the more vital when backed with the understated stage presence anddeft musicianshipof Johan Surrballe Wieth, Dan Kjr Nielsen and Jakob Tvilling Pless. Iceage's new albumYou're Nothingis a wildly diverse and unexpectedly catchy ride through post-punk, hardcore and experimental noise with strikingly imagistic lyrics that hit like a bullet. In the remarkable new track 'Awake', Elias launches from throbbing riffs into an unsettling deeply-intoned monologue:"The walls began to crack/ They launched the guns at their sons heads."

Much has been made of the supposedly fascist undertones the of the band's work:Wieth has a tattoo of equally controversial80s neofolk bandDeath In June's Whip-Handlogotheinterlocking letters of their ownband symbol form a cultish geometry.At Iceage gigs, collected fans pump their fists atRnnenfelt – as attendees of punk gigs have done at every show since1978.If Iceage's first albumNew Brigadewas their statement of intent in 2-minute throttling blasts, thenYou're Nothingis the sound of the band widening their view and finding just as much fear, hope, and lust. And while theirvision is often unpretty - even sinister - it's far from the F-word.

A lot of the time anger is directed inwards. But onYou're Nothing,for every lyric like"If I could/ leave my body then I would/ Bleed into a lake/Dashing away/ Disappear"there's an optimistic payoff, like in 'Ecstasy', where Rnnenfelt sings of being"adorned in carnal ecstasy… A mere blow of wind could turn me into light."There's an urgent and ever-quickening pulse beneath the bloody knuckles as they self-assuredly articulate their message. Iceage are a band to believe in - you can even buy the pinbadgeto declare it.

DD: Your new album's calledYou're Nothing. Who's that sentiment directed at?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Both the way you see other people sometimes, but also how things can feel like nothing in a certain light. It's written from a personal point of view. It's not pointed at a specific person, it's more of an emotion.

DD: My favourite track on the album is 'Morals'. The use of piano is new for the band.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: I don't know how conscious it was. There's not really any boundaries when you write, and sometimes it goes in unexpected places. That song is inspired by an old Italian singer called Mina. I can't remember how I found out about her, but I was listening to a lot of old Italian music, and I found a song of hers, and 'Morals' is kind of based on the piano that song.I think she might be singing "someone like you", which is a lyric in the song.

DD: Do you think there's a lack of morals in society, or in people you observe?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Yeah, just in surroundings. It's not necessarily written from a political view, but more of human view. It's more about self-respect, when people are insincere and stuff like that. I write most of the lyrics but we all contribute.

DD: I love the monologue in 'Awake' -"The fire broke out, we were running the night" -and then there's the sound of glass breaking.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: It's partly about society, but also that lyric is also very much about imagery. Those lyrics are quite theatrical. We were trying rock opera. [laughs] I guess it's our 'Bohemian Rapsody'.

DD: Is it tongue-in-cheek?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: No.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: I guess the lyrics are a bit about the walls of society, however that may sound.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Just the boundaries and stuff. Not actual walls. The state, and institutions in general.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: If we need to smash a glass to have a revolution…? It's a big question to answer. We're not really a political band.

DD: I read that you refer to your fans as victims. How come?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: That's a thing that keeps getting misinterpreted again and again. We get asked about it a lot, but people don't really seem to get it. On a blog ages ago, there was a friend of ours who got pushed into a pit, and got seven stitches or something, and he had a picture there that said "Victim". It's not anything that we thought that much about. Obviously we don't see our fans as victims.

DD: Do you feel differently about this new album to your first,New Brigade(2011)?

Dan Kjr Nielsen: Yeah. I think there's more going on. We've tried to do more things, and not to be restricting ourselves.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: I think it's much better.

DD: Is it true that you took your name from the Warsaw song 'Living In The Ice Age'?

Dan Kjr Nielsen: No. We were brainstorming words.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: It sounded like a band name. We thought it was kind of stupid to call ourselves Ice Age, 'cause we don't wanna be associated with the Ice Age! So we spelled it in one word.

DD: Elias, your presence onstage seems quite trance-like. Does it feel that way to you?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Sometimes. If it's a good show, I guess I sometimes forget about what I'm doing.

DD: There was a lot of body contact too, it seemed like an intimate experience

Dan Kjr Nielsen: We're working together. We have a brotherly relationship.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: We've known each other for a really long time. I started hanging out with these guys since I was 11 or 12 or something. We just grew up in the same neighbourhood.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: Johan was in my class since we were six years old.

DD: What were you listening to at six years old?

Dan Kjr Nielsen: Kids' music. Michael Jackson. Me and my mother shared a Spice Girls CD, but I would only listen to it when she put it on.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: I don't think I cared that much for music back then.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: My father taught me to like KISS, but I mostly just looked at them.

DD: Well, KISS put on a great show. Is it important to you to put on a great live experience?

Dan Kjr Nielsen: Well, if itisa great live experience! Sometimes it is pretty shit. We're not a band you can rely on. Sometimes everything falls apart and it's nothing, and sometimes it's like we're the greatest band in the world.

DD: Who's your dream band to play with.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Ah, we like to play with our friends.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: (deadpans) KISS!

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: We decided one time to do support shows for Fucked Up, but we weren't really into it. We'd rather do our own thing and maybe play for less people, but at least we're playing forourpeople.

DD: Elias, what your influences in terms of literature?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: I like writers like George Bataille, The Story of the Eye. There are a couple of references to that in our lyrics. I think I was reading it around these guys - we all took turns to read it.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: (grins) It's a pretty dirty book.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Yukio Mishima, and Jean Genet is awesome. I've read The Thief's Journal and now I'm reading The Miracle of the Rose.

On their second album The New Life, Belfast four-piece Girls Names move away from the garagey-pop of their debut Dead To Me and delve into post-punk shadowplay. Their Tumblr makes for a pretty good soundboard of their new touchstones: favourites include the bleak, Berlin-born masterpieces of Bowie's Low and Iggy Pop's The Idiot. They haven't done away with the tunes though on this excellent headphones record, and gloom often turns out to be the perfect foil for their deft pop hooks and spacey swooshes.

Back in October, the band released the 8-minute-pushing title track of the record to introduce their new noir landscape which plays with textural darkness and is finds depth in the experimental recesses of audio. On new songs like 'Occultation' and 'The Olympia', computerised oscillations and piston-like pulses rough up the edges of the earworm melodies and washed-out guitars. In terms of a band upping their game, it's a bit like when Deerhunter followed Turn It Up Faggot with Cryptograms. Alongside Dazed Digital's exclusive stream of the record, we caught up with singer Cathal Cully to find out more.

Dazed Digital: Why did you call your album The New Life?
Cathal Cully: The New Life was the name of the newest song and subsequently first single off the record. It just seemed to ring through with everything we were doing. It kind of rolled off the tongue and stuck, it made sense to call it The New Life. I don't know exactly what the new life is yet but hopefully will find out some day soon.

DD: Where was the album recorded, and over what kind of time period?
Cathal Cully: We tracked the bulk of it over a two-week period back in June last year at Start Together Studios here in Belfast. Then I returned sporadically every now and then tweaking mixes and generating new ideas until about the middle of October. Then myself and Ben, who engineered and mixed it, spent a pretty intense week finishing it off.

DD: Since the release of your last album Dead To Me you've added a new member, Phil. How have things changed since he joined the band?
Cathal Cully: We've become a much better live band to listen to and watch, something we were struggling with for a while.

DD: In your song 'Occultation', a bright jangly riff comes in just as the song is beginning to fade out. Do you consciously try to keep a lid on the janglyness?
Cathal Cully: Haha! Yes, I like the idea of that. I think I may want to get rid of guitars all together.

DD: What's your favourite work of visual art?
Cathal Cully: At the minute it's Pyramid of Light (1964) by Heinz Mack, a founding member of Group Zero who were based in Dsseldorf. Group Zero's work and their ideals were a massive influence for me when it came to making this album and naming it, and this piece is on permanent show at the Ulster Museum which is less than a 10 minute walk from my house so it's a lot more tangible to me.

DD: A reviewer once said that he would like to drown to your music. Do you think of your music as dark or morbid?
Cathal Cully: I honestly didn't know that. Poor guy or girl. No it's not morbid at all, though it has dark and nervous sounding tendencies for sure. It does entertain the darker notions of the mind which is only natural, and there's nothing wrong with that. I find it more shocking that people can make happy-sounding music and that no comment is passed about that. Most art as a form of expression is usually down to some sort of need to cathartically expel the ideas locked inside and therefore to create something new. Otherwise you're just in the entertainment business.

DD: You said around the time of your last record that "Dead to Me literally was dead to us by the time it was committed to wax." Did this record feel like an exorcism as well?
Cathal Cully: Totally. Like I said, It was a real cathartic process making this album. There's a lot of weight lifted now it's out there. It was a particularly challenging and draining experience but a great one all the same. I learned so much from it.

DD: Do you think that indie is in a good place at the moment?
Cathal Cully: No. 'indie' music and this notion of 'guitar music', that I keep hearing about that's making a resurgence is a terrible notion that needs to be stamped out and eradicated. Independent music however is very healthy with ideas and a lot of talented people and artists. My only fear is that it isn't all getting out there to enough people.

DD: You pressed the album on transparent vinyl. What's the best thing to look at through it?
Cathal Cully: I want to say someone in particular but I haven't had the chance to do that yet so possibly that person.

DD: The title of your song 'Pittura Infamante' is a reference to the Italian Renaissance genre of defamatory painting. Who did you have in mind, and who would you like to paint a defamatory painting of?
Cathal Cully: Since you've asked, It was mainly myself in mind but no one in particular. David Cameron should be made into a 'Pittura Infamante' although he does a good job of it himself by just opening his mouth and being some sort of walking talking idiot buffoon.

DD: Were you sad that the production of MiniDisc players is ceasing?
Cathal Cully: I'm not sad but yeah I had one, still do somewhere. They were great actually at the time - the idea you could have 3 CDs on one disc half the size of your walkman. My A-level years were transformed. When me and Neil started the band I used to record our demos on my MiniDisc player, and bounced down an old 4track because that's all the gear we had and couldn't afford anything else. Come to think of it, the demo we sent to Captured Tracks that basically got them interested in doing our first EP was made in this way.

DD: What's your favourite filter on Instagram?
Cathal Cully: I've never used Instagram but just did a quick Google. Nashville.

DD: What are your Top 5 favourite girls' names?
Cathal Cully: 1. Helen, 2. Ann, 3. Cara, 4. Claire, 5. Anne.

Get The New Life here.

Follow Owen Myers on Twitter here: @Owen_Myers