By Jack Lynch
Even from the first track, you wouldn’t know Iceage’s newest album is an Iceage album. In fact, you wouldn’t know from any track on the band’s third LP that it’s an Iceage record, and yet, Plowing Into The Field of Love is an artistic, crushing, intelligent album that couldn’t have been written by any other band.
In spite of the fact that the Danish punks were at the forefront of the Scandinavian hardcore scene they more or less created, they’ve moved away from the raw anger of their first two albums and completely reinvented their sound. I, for one, was a little bit disappointed at first that there was no “Coalition” or “Everything Drifts” to be found on Fields of Love, since Iceage does raw anger so well, but there’s still a sense of weight, an existential dread pervading every track. It’s as if lead singer and lyricist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt has matured past being pissed off at the meaningless tragedy of existence, and is now documenting his acceptance of the absurd human condition.
After all, what is darker than an animal too tired to thrash in his shackles any longer?
Opening track “On My Fingers” is a character song, in which Rønnenfelt embodies a sociopath that one can only assume is a figure from his life, or perhaps a more generalized caricature of those with power. He sings, “I don’t care whose house is on fire, as long as I can warm myself at the blaze of burning furniture, cherished photographs.”
Though to be fair, Rønnenfelt doesn’t really sing. His baritone vocal style is a cross between speaking, singing a few pitches at once, and yelling in an articulate, half-cockney accent.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_aMZsXIINM[/youtube]A surprising addition to the band’s sonic aesthetic is a distinctly American twang, heard in the borderline rockabilly “The Lord’s Favorite” and the southern rock instrumentation of “Glassy Eyed, Dormant and Veiled.” The former is one of the best songs the band has written to date, and completely iconoclastic compared to the rest of their catalogue, while the latter is a brutally honest portrayal of the pain a drunk, absent father can cause.
However, Iceage is still a young band, and there are a few moments throughout the album when the songs would benefit from a greater sense of control. Brilliant and introspective album highlight “Forever” falls short of greatness when the band lets their passion take the song where it will go, instead of taking a step back and reining in the tempo in order to make a definitive, serious statement.
But for all its youthful energy, Plowing Into The Fields of Love is a harrowing, compelling piece of art that showcases a group of quickly maturing artists coming into their own, and it is absolutely worth your time.
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