Iceage

Words by: Laura Bonne | Photography by: Steve Gullick

A tête-à-tête with the (in)famous Elias Bender Rønnenfelt and Johan Suurballe Wieth of Danish punk band Iceage feels, to say the least, intimidating. After a four-year absence— starting riots? Overthrowing governments? Watching buildings burn?—they’re back this summer with a new album. On Beyondless—and its throbbing lead single Pain Killer with Sky Ferreira guesting on vocals in particular— the foursome sounds as strong, spacious and grave as ever, cementing their reputation as some of the most sincere names of the contemporary punk scene.

Q: Your last two albums sound a lot more ‘spacious’ than the first two. How has your sound evolved?

EBR: When we were recording our very first album, we went into the studio without knowing anything about anything, to be honest. We didn’t have any expertise and were just trying things. From there, we kept on trying until we got to where we are now.

JSW: Our sound has evolved, but it’s also still evolving. We’ve progressed. The songwriting was really phonetic and dense in the beginning. But we leave more space in it now.

EBR: At the same time, we don’t want to think too much about those things. Being a band is an ongoing learning process. We never sit down and talk about where we want to go stylistically. When we write music, it takes whatever shape it needs… [Pauses to think] But what I can say about this album, is that it stands in its own right. It’s very much an album. I don’t know how to explain the details of it, but the main thing is that we always try to push our own boundaries. We seek out territories that we haven’t entered before, take chances and see where they lead us. We push the boundaries of our idea of what the band is or has been.

Q: Speaking of pushing boundaries, we heard you deliberately booked a short amount of studio time when recording the previous albums?

JSW: We did the same thing for Beyondless. It saves us from overanalysing things and creates immediacy at the same time, which results in us having to make choices very fast. It appears to be the best way to work for us. Although we have to admit that the time span has become longer and longer for each record so far, because the music has required more and more time—but still not enough.

EBR: The writing itself can take a long time, but when it comes to actually conveying a song, we don’t want to overthink anything because it’s all about getting a burst of something down on tape. If you exhaust yourself, maybe some sort of fatigue will enter the way the recordings come out. And you don’t want that, of course.

Q: Is there still room for improvisation when you go into the studio?

JSW: The raw song material is more or less done, but there’s an amount of improvisation in the way that songs often reveal things that you didn’t have the space during writing and rehearsing to see. Especially when a record is dubbed, it opens up a lot.

EBR: The freedom you have in the studio is mostly about what sort of feeling you want to get into it. Sometimes you find some strange instrument that sounds perfect in there, but that you had no idea you would encounter. Afterwards, you can’t imagine it not being there. Sometimes you have to be aware of your own mistakes as well because they can become what you love about a particular take. We talked about that earlier on: when we have to pick a take, it’s often not so much about choosing the one that doesn’t have mistakes but about the one that has the best mistakes.

Q: Do you play all the instruments yourselves, then?

EBR: Yes. I played some piano and organ, Johan and the bass player played violin. And we use whatever strange gear we can find in the studio.

Q: But on stage, you’re playing with two new musicians.

EBR: Indeed. There’s a sax player and a musician who plays piano and violin. The instrumentation plays a really big part on this record, so for the first time it made sense to invite some other musicians and give it a bigger picture.

Q: Being a band of four members, how do you all stay on the same artistic level?

JSW: We’ve known each other for a very long time, and we’ve made music together for a very long time. We were friends before and the base of that friendship is the common interest. As we started making music together and grew together, we were kind of coherent and evolved alongside each other.

EBR: We started listening to music together and shared our discoveries with each other way before we did anything musically. We still do that, and going on tour with the four of us is always very interesting. We all have that gene that causes us to start digging for obscure things we haven’t heard before. We’ve always been and are still growing as music fans together.

Q: What are you listening to right now?

EBR: This morning at the hotel I found a classical radio channel on the TV. I put it on pretty loud. I have no idea what it was, but it was great.

JSW: I listened to classical music this morning as well, actually!

EBR: Lately, I’ve gone on some sort of spree where I found all these ’70s church bands that incorporated funk music. It was mad stuff I haven’t heard before. But don’t ask me names. [Laughs]