{"id":621010,"date":"2026-06-04T15:52:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T15:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/621010\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T15:52:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T15:52:19","slug":"iceage-for-love-of-grace-the-hereafter-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/621010\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceage: For Love of Grace & the Hereafter Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Historically, punk has been a young person\u2019s game. When they issued their galvanizing debut, New Brigade<\/a>, in 2011, the members of Iceage<\/a> were still teenagers, concerned with capturing the volatile energy of their sometimes-bloody live shows. There was no room for draggy runtimes or studio accoutrements; as guitarist Johan Suurballe Wieth recently recalled, \u201cWe were very adamant \u2026 that there could be no overdubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Iceage\u2019s secret is that they only got better when they began to slow the tempos, accept that overdubs wouldn\u2019t snatch their souls, and remold their energy into a more brooding goth-rock grandeur. That evolution began on 2014\u2019s Plowing Into the Field of Love<\/a> and reached a culmination on 2021\u2019s Seek Shelter<\/a>, which welcomed Madchester grooves and gospel choirs into the group\u2019s once austere sensibility.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Iceage continue their winning streak on For Love of Grace & the Hereafter, an exhilarating album where romance and violence fuse into a feverish blur. The first Iceage album in five years, For Love of Grace is somewhat of a reset. The band returned to the tiny studio in the Swedish countryside where they recorded Plowing with no outside producers; they banged out the basic tracks in a week. \u201cThis was not a question of going into the studio and going on an expensive journey of discovering a sound,\u201d frontman Elias Bender R\u00f8nnenfelt told So Young<\/a>. \u201cWe just wanted to take what was in the rehearsal space and cut it to tape. It needed to be very raw.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than return to the hardcore of early Iceage, For Love of Grace does something better: harnessing the immediacy of those records in service of pastoral punk, swooning hooks, and a wild-eyed romantic fervor. R\u00f8nnenfelt is in stellar form as a singer, channeling a melodic richness that once seemed beyond his range, whether he\u2019s scat-singing over the opening eruptions of the lovesick \u201cMatch Head Girl\u201d or crooning about a love that makes him feel like a dying star on the jangly headrush of \u201cStar.\u201d At times, he sounds like a Scandinavian Paul Westerberg<\/a>, hopped up on red, red wine<\/a>: He doesn\u2019t hit all the high notes, but he summons feelings bigger and brighter than his octave range.<\/p>\n

Maybe R\u00f8nnenfelt was energized by the Americana flourishes on his recent solo<\/a> albums<\/a>, or maybe it\u2019s a side effect of recording in rural Sweden, where elk and roe deer are in higher supply than vocal processors. \u201cThe Weak\u201d is all ripping rockabilly and cowpunk clatter, with twangy guitars that mimic banjos and an ear-piercing recorder solo. (A happy accident after R\u00f8nnenfelt found a recorder and tin whistle at the studio and decided to put both in his mouth at the same time.) \u201cSalve for Every Sore\u201d is a breathless reverie whose strings and folk-punk rhythms bring a sense of tenderness to Iceage\u2019s tumult. \u201cMy little darling\/I get the impression you\u2019re a salve for every sore,\u201d R\u00f8nnenfelt croons, punctuating his longing with a Springsteen<\/a>-ian Whoah-oh-oh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Historically, punk has been a young person\u2019s game. When they issued their galvanizing debut, New Brigade, in 2011,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[375,96,2839,56,54,55,307],"class_list":["post-621010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}