{"id":699306,"date":"2026-05-28T12:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T12:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/699306\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T12:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T12:15:08","slug":"iceage-for-love-of-grace-the-hereafter-review-danish-punks-ace-sixth-stellar-album-on-the-trot-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/699306\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceage: For Love of Grace & the Hereafter review \u2013 Danish punks ace sixth stellar album on the trot | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iceage have always seemed like a band in a state of constant development. You might say that\u2019s understandable, given the Danish musicians were in their teens when their debut album New Brigade<\/a> was released in 2011: if you don\u2019t change between the age of 18 and your early 30s, you\u2019re probably in trouble. But rock music isn\u2019t real life, and a less adventurous band might have been minded to stick with a good thing, given the reception New Brigade was afforded. Twenty-four minutes of hardcore blended with noisy Birthday Party-esque post-punk and a sizeable pinch of gothic gloom, it was praised so vociferously that the praise itself provoked heated debate, as claims any one band are the \u201csaviours\u201d of an entire genre are wont to do, particularly when said genre is punk.<\/p>\n

The artwork for For the Love of Grace & the Hereafter<\/p>\n

Iceage seemed entirely unbothered about any ensuing weight of expectation. If they didn\u2019t exactly sound like a completely different band on 2014\u2019s Plowing Into the Field of Love<\/a>, they were still doing things you would never have imagined the authors of New Brigade doing: piano ballads, country-rock and, on Abundant Living, attempting to join the dots between Howlin\u2019 Wolf\u2019s Smokestack Lightning and the ramshackle sound of frontman Elias R\u00f8nnenfelt\u2019s favourites the Pogues. In 2018, Beyondless<\/a> offered Dexys-style horns, New Orleans jazz and a track that sounded like mid-80s U2 equipped with a string section. By 2021\u2019s Seek Shelter<\/a>, they had a gospel choir on board and mixed anthemic songs \u2013 imagine Oasis mired in angst, gloom and distortion \u2013 with tracks that interpolated the Carter Family\u2019s Can the Circle Be Unbroken? or bore the influence of French chanson.<\/p>\n

Their sixth album, For Love of Grace & the Hereafter, is billed as a return to punky first principles. \u201cWe wanted to try to shed any unnecessary weight,\u201d R\u00f8nnenfelt has said, describing its contents as \u201cimmediate, urgent, raw and fast\u201d. It\u2019s certainly less epic than its predecessor \u2013 but the barely contained chaos that Iceage once dealt in is conspicuously absent.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Iceage: Star \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Instead, the new album feels powerful, but streamlined in every sense, and the songwriting is extraordinarily tight and punchily melodic throughout. For all the ragged energy of the guitars and the full-bore punk assault of opener Ember, there\u2019s an ease and deftness with which the band navigate tempo changes and dynamic shifts mid-song on Match Head Girl or No Fear.There\u2019s a distinct hint of 50s rock\u2019n\u2019roll that hangs around The Weak, baggy-era British alt-rock is audible on Star, and True Blue impressively melds county-rock with shoegaze\u2019s pitch-bent guitars \u2013 but these musical approaches are corralled into an articulate, cohesive album that flows rather than heaves between different styles.<\/p>\n

The songs have a sparkle to them: a curiously effective backing for R\u00f8nnenfelt\u2019s lyrics, which still tend to the pugilistic, visceral and bleak, and make love sound like mortal combat. \u201cI\u2019m a bee and I\u2019m jammed by my stinger in you \/ It is home, it is death,\u201d he sings on Holy Water \u2013 great inspo for next year\u2019s Valentine\u2019s Day card \u2013 and elsewhere he offers encouragement that might make the recipient wish he hadn\u2019t bothered. \u201cYou\u2019ll be a good mother,\u201d he soothes on Mother-of-Pearl, after enumerating the grim circumstances in which said pregnancy is taking place, including a heroin-using jailbird father and a \u201cshithouse\u201d home shared with other addicts.<\/p>\n

It should be heavy going, but it never is, because the actual music is so gleeful. Mother-of-Pearl leavens its lyrical misery with an iridescent chorus and a freewheeling backing that evokes a sunlit version of Iggy Pop\u2019s Lust for Life; Holy Water blazes breathlessly along on a simple, addictive riff that sounds like it\u2019s being played on twin guitars and a toy piano. The appearance of the latter instrument points to a intriguing streak of humour that runs intermittently through the sound. In lieu of a guitar solo, The Weak throws up a burst of squeaking atonal recorder-playing, the racket that might ensue when a teacher temporarily leaves a primary school music class unattended; 1835 proceeds with a breezy rhythmic swing that lends a peculiar, shrugging cast to R\u00f8nnenfelt\u2019s thoughts on the meaningless transience of life.<\/p>\n

The result is the sixth fantastic Iceage album: a hugely impressive streak. It leaves you thinking that while the band\u2019s constant development and diversity is striking, their consistency is more striking still. Being very good at what you do is one thing; being very good at what you do, when what you do keeps changing, is another thing entirely. And that\u2019s what Iceage are: long may they stay in a state of flux.<\/p>\n

This week Alexis listened to<\/p>\n

Dames Brown and Amp Fiddler \u2013 As I Am (Moodymann remix)<\/a>
The original version is fine, funky old school soul, but Moodymann\u2019s remix transforms the Detroit vocal trio into purveyors of raw, bumping, psychedelic house music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iceage have always seemed like a band in a state of constant development. You might say that\u2019s understandable,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-699306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}