Iceage: Beaten By Honey Kids And A Red Negro

The most hyped act of last week’s edition of Eurosonic must have been the Danish punk-rock quartet of Iceage. Fridaynight, at 1:15, they were the closing act in Groninger rock temple Vera. During their US tour the angry youths build up a reputation as a provoking live act, whose shows regularly end in mayhem. Indiefuzz was watching the whole thing from a spot near one of the emergency exits. But nothing happened, perhaps half an hour is just too short for an Iceage gig to get out of hand.

Fridaynight the wild pogoing is contained to a neat circle in front of the stage. Barely half a liter of beer becomes airborne (in plastic cups so that doesn’t even count.) The most ostentatious member of the audience seems to be the owner of Vera, who is trying to do harm to lead singer Elias Bender Ronnenfelt’s guitar. All is fair in war and showbiz, but his efforts are not going to help make this a legendary show.

Throughout most of the gig Ronnenfelt and his three band mates are near-motionless shadows on a darkly lit stage. The whole act is a bit too sinister to be taken seriously. What doesn’t help is that the band that played the stage before Iceage, gave an excellent display of how you can be ruthlessly loud and disturbing and still be playful and visually interesting. Kristiansand’s Honningbarna (Honey Kids) are a feast for the eye. They are the straight punk-rock equivalent of the Village People: a lead-singer in a school-uniform who plays the cello, a chubby half-naked drummer, a tuffted rythm-guitarist dressed in black, a Norwegian youth in an overall, a Norwegian youth dressed in the shirt of an Ethiopian marathonrunner. There’s something for every punk-rock girl (or boy).

Edvard Valberg plays his cello in the most expressive way imaginable. His intense facial expressions are in stark contrast with the empty glances that half an hour later Iceage’s Ronnenfelt gives us from underneath his Zoro-hat. If Ronnenfelt is not sedated, uninterested or just utterly bored, he certainly wants us to believe he is. It’s very, very no future.

Musically too, Iceage are beaten by the angry honey kids, but that’s just my opinion as one of punk-rock’s uninitiated. Especially at the beginning of Iceage’s performance, the sharp hooks that make New Brigade such a crafty album, are going down in a glacier of noise. It reduces Ronnenfelt’s ominous grunt to a smothered hum. Even towards the end the gig, when the sound is more balanced, the hyped Scandinavians rarely manage to impress anyone outside of the pogo-pit. When it comes down to spreading angry punk-rock confusion they lose to Honningbarna and as far as being offensive and politically incorrect is concerned, they pale compared to the banner used by Vera’s DJ de Rode Neger (the Red Negro).