Warsaw, via NYC & Copenhagen: Iceage coming back to Denver Tonight

If you’re not planning to be at the Marquis Theater tonight to catch Iceage, you’re giving up on the chance to see a replay of the power that anchored most of  post-punk. At the very least, we’re going to be in the presence of a band whose noise and passion invoke Warsaw (pre-Joy Division, and arguably the root of all that followed, even up through the sick sweetening of emo-into-screamo). What we can only hope for is that what we’ll be seeing is a preview to some sort of powerful re-insemination.

This Danish four-piece  – Johan Surrballe Wieth, Dan Kjær Nielsen Elias Bender Rønnenfelt and Jakob Tvilling Pless – pull their sound from the same feeling behind later post-post-(post?)-punk bands such as Fucked Up and No Age, for sure. But more truthfully – and, for my money, more excitingly – they live in the same sonic backyard as Squirrel Bait, or Paw, and share the violently fun and chaotic thrust of New York No Wave. And it feels like they’ve just gone ahead and skipped past the last decade of shallow, heart-wrenching and tear-jerking emo (arrright – it’s not been ALL bad – but let’s just say we’re not all  broken up (or even really concerned) by the long-overdue demise of MCR), and just built their own thing.

Elias Rønnenfelt leads the sloppy havoc with an off-key howl – sometimes in English, sometimes in Danish – that spawns a drunker, slower, angrier Ian Curtis orbiting around Jakob Pless’s bass, and the rest may or may not fit for the next few minutes. And then the “song” is over, and another one’s on its way, just as anarchic as the last. But, eventually it coagulates and you start to get the idea.

First, check out this “mini-documentary” of the band in NYC in January below;

Then listen to their WNYC Soundcheck piece below – to get a taste.

Then, get a real taste at the Marquis tonight – with Merchandise and Wet Hair. If you miss this boat, don’t say you weren’t warned.