Iceage - Beyondless

The Quietus

Iceage have always been a prospect most enigmatic; they rarely give interviews, they release albums with esoteric cover art, and they communicate with their fans solely through music. The band are childhood friends, and to outsiders they can seem like an impenetrable gang, lurking in the shadows of all that is good and true. There’s much variety between the riotous (and often half-baked) malignance of their first two albums, The New Brigade and You’re Nothing, and their more fully realised third album, 2014’s Plowing Into The Field Of Love, but their music always has recurring themes and remains hard to decipher.

The leader of this gang, and the key to their mystery, is Elias Bender Rønnenfelt. As Iceage rose to cult status, they were defined by this chiselled figure. His sharp teeth showing, his hair in his eyes, and his lyrics often unintelligible as they gushed out of his mouth in the black of night. But now, on Beyondless, it feels as though Rønnenfelt has shed this mystery; his role is to the listener, to add clarity and help understanding, where before he was the very thing muddying the water.

Beyondless arrives after a string of releases from Rønnenfelt’s tonally brighter side-project, Marching Church. While the album certainly covers pastures already trodden – scorn, turmoil, and heartbreak – it also seems to revel in allegory, explore the neutral territories of confusion, and ultimately act as a triumphant victory lap. At times they sound every bit as vicious as on their earlier, thrashier works, but throughout Beyondless you get the sense that they are genuinely enjoying themselves.

The opening duo of ‘Hurrah’ and ‘Pain Killer’ exemplify this best. A fiery cold-water-on-hot-oil Johnny Thunders guitar lick ushers in ‘Hurrah’, the album’s most cathartic song. Rønnenfelt rasps, croons and hollers a fervent antiwar sentiment with such passion that it sounds like the victory cry of someone who’s vanquished all the world’s ills through sheer force of will. He growls, “Cos we can't stop killing, and we'll never stop killing / And we shouldn't stop killing, hurrah!” - and boy is it powerful.

‘Pain Killer’ is an enriched variation on this theme, with the help of a bombastic horn section and backing vocals from quirk-pop pariah Sky Ferreira. Atop the fanfare, Rønnenfelt and Ferreira’s husky harmonies transform a fairly sombre chorus into an anthem, making a celebration of life’s little victories in the face of great trepidation. The chorus goes: “You made me rue the day / You became my pain killer”. But it is belted out by both parties with such force that it radiates joy, not regret.

Elias Bender Rønnenfelt has always seemed to position himself as one of rock music’s ‘tortured poets’, but Beyondless goes some way to highlighting his prowess as a lyricist. The lyric sheets to Beyondless read like prose, but you don’t have to break out the reading glasses to decode his songs. Aided by crystal clear vocal production, Rønnenfelt’s lyrics are instantaneous and shape the record in his strange vision. Whether that’s atop the snotty post-punk of ‘Hurrah’, the tilted sea shanty of ‘Thieves Like Us’, or the pop noir of ‘Showtime’.

‘Showtime’ is a particular highlight, as the lyrics conjure an especially vivid picture. Much in the vein of Ian Curtis on Atrocity Exhibition – a sneer at the people who “pay to see his body twist” – Rønnenfelt details a fictional singer’s decline as he pushes the limits of how much one should suffer for their art. “In the roaring applause / a pistol he draws / And blows his brains all over the stage,” he sings. “Hence it’s showtime / Wretched pantomime”.

The song might be about pushing at artistic boundaries, but for Iceage it signifies the breach of a different kind of threshold. It is sultry and sordid, as the band’s trademark sounds yields to an overpowering saxophone. Dark and lusty, it’s Old Hollywood meets Cronenberg.

It is only on tunes like lead single ‘Catch It’ and slow burning Take It All – fairly stagnant, atmospheric post-punk numbers – that the band’s rejig of their sound misses the mark. The moments of righteousness, though, outnumber the misfires. Iceage’s efforts to expand their sound not only permeate this record, but make it their finest work to date. They have always been a more-than-capable band, but this album suggests they could one day be a great one.

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Pitchfork 86

The fourth album from the Danish punk band is an astonishing odyssey, reaching for pop-gothic grandeur with more tenacity and abandon than ever.

The Guardian 80

(Matador)

After two albums of exhilarating, if slightly derivative, post-punk-influenced hardcore, Copenhagen’s Iceage threw a curveball with 2014’s Plowing Into the Field of Love. Taking their cues from the Bad Seeds rather than Black Flag, they slowed down and expanded their palette with hints of blues and folk, but were hamstrung by a lack of anything resembling a tune. Beyondless builds on Plowing’s change of direction, with far more satisfying results. Frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s voice still dominates, but this time his slurring delivery works in the band’s favour, giving Showtime and the stop-start Thieves Like Us the air of unsettling late-night cabaret numbers. His duet with girlfriend Sky Ferreira on the brass-assisted Pain Killer, meanwhile, is an exercise in barely harnessed chaos – think Fun House-era Stooges – that’s as impressive as anything the band have ever done. Other highlights include the relentless opener, Hurrah (even if its lyrical obsession with killing sounds distinctly adolescent), and the uncharacteristic restraint of Take It All. It’s by no means a comfortable listen, but it is their most intriguing and fully rounded album to date.

Drowned In Sound 80

The secret here is balance. Beyondless teeters on a knife-edge between the sharp corners of soul music, especially on the horn-driven ‘Pain Killer’ and the crunchy ‘The Day The Music Died’, and a spry rock band desperate to push harder and run faster, but refusing to let themselves off the leash. That pent-up energy feeds back into the music as a glorious tension, with drummer Dan Nielson trying to drive his band forward with martial snare rolls and dextrous fills, like he’s pressing down on the accelerator of a car that’s chained to wall. The band don’t budge an inch. It gives the album a manic, twitchy feel, constantly on the verge of blowing a gasket and flying off the handle. Somehow, despite the mixed metaphors, the control is maintained.

Fourth albums are supposed to be game changers; the point in a career where a band stretch their ambitions and regenerate into something new. That’s true of Beyondless. If this was your first encounter you’d wonder what that 'punk rock' label at the top of their Wikipedia page was doing there; the thrills here don’t come from the primitive thump and thrash. Instead this is a record that luxuriates in classy textures even as it undermines them with queasy sounds and lurching rhythms. Its touchstones are Iggy and the Stooges’ Raw Power, Primal Scream’s Give Up, But Don’t Give In and the Stones’ Let It Bleed, with splashes of the Libertines, Sonic Youth and The Birthday Party. Classy influences for a classy record.

Frontman Elias Rønnenfelt possesses a bloodthirsty vocal just one remove from sinister, and has a narrative voice closer to a novelist than a lyricist, albeit one influenced by the gonzo surrealism of Mark E Smith and Nick Cave (“I can’t stop killing and we’ll never stop killing and we shouldn’t stop killing me” or ”I gave myself an exorcism.”). His ability to set a scene, a mood, an entire story in just a few lines is genuinely remarkable “Help, I think I blindfolded the chauffeur” he sings on ‘Thieves Like Us’, which is a short-story you immediately want to read, while ‘Plead The Fifth’ is narrated by “a great pretender, corseted in gilded halls” who is keen to “line them up in the toilet stalls…STDs on the tip of my tongue”. It’s remarkable stuff; like the album itself it’s literary, clever and sumptuous while still distinctly pop.

Whether indulging in the sexy, shambolic rock n’ soul of Sky Ferreira duet ‘Pain Killer’, the woozy stop-start-speed-up-slow-down of album centre-piece ‘Catch It’, or the Let It Bleed-meets-Oasis-ish ‘Under The Sun’ Beyondless is an ambitious and accomplished ride that will claim a deserved spot on most Best-Of lists this year. Wrap up warm: the ice age has arrived.