BEYONDLESS | ICEAGE

Ryan Leas @ Stereogum: Ever since their first LP, New Brigade, appeared at the beginning of this decade, the Danish quartet Iceage have been buzzed about in particular punk and indie circles. Given they were still basically kids at the time, they’ve also proven themselves to be shape-shifters over the years. From the squalls of distortion that washed over the more aggressive New Brigade and its 2013 followup, You’re Nothing, the band rewrote their own rules on 2014’s Plowing Into The Field Of Love, betraying an affinity for Nick Cave as they delved into a frayed and heavy take on Americana that was still indebted to punk but now with a cinematic scope.

Now, a lot of people loved those albums, and there was plenty to love on all of them. But their latest collection, Beyondless, finds Iceage jumping up to a completely new level. It feels like the long-awaited delivery on the promise this band has always possessed, the moment when they could rise to the next echelon of today’s indie landscape. I can’t think of many other young artists making rock music that sounds like anything like this right now, and if they’re out there, they aren’t doing it half as well. The easiest way to sum up Beyondless is that the Nick Cave influence is still very much present. It sounds like Cave in his more feral early days attempting to make a Rolling Stones album but being unable to help himself from periodically contorting it into blackened mystic shapes or just straight-up dousing it in gasoline, dropping a match, and dancing amongst the flames. There are various points across Beyondless where Iceage sound alternately swaggering, strung out, shamanistic, drunk, and ferocious. . .