Elias Rønnenfelt often sounds like the act of singing physically pains him, like each breath he draws to fuel the next cavernous howl is a self-inflicted punishment. The Danish rocker has never been one to rest easy. He was just 17 when Iceage formed in 2008, and for over a decade, the band has remained consistent in its lineup and the quality of its output. Rønnenfelt released his solo debut, Heavy Glory, in 2024, and hasn’t hit the brakes since. This year, he teamed up with Yung Lean and Fousheé for two songs and collaborated with Dean Blunt on an EP, as well as a follow-up single: “Tears on His Rings and Chains,” a serene and stripped-back ballad with production from Blunt and Vegyn and a sly namedrop of the title of Rønnenfelt’s forthcoming record. On Speak Daggers, Rønnenfelt continues to grapple with hells both earthly and hypothetical, channeling his struggles with power and mortality into woozy industrial cloud punk.
As a solo artist, Rønnenfelt has collected a dream team of guests, and Speak Daggers is his most star-studded project to date. He recruits reggae legends the Congos for the melodica-led “Not Gonna Follow,” which amps up the tunneling, blown-out sound he flirted with on earlier solo work (and even some more recent Iceage tracks). He drags out the few words that make up the chorus (“The stars, the reach/The ends, the means/The rough, the cut/The rinse, repeat”) and lets every clang, rattle, and horn blast echo through the purgatorial atmosphere. A rogue banjo sneaks through “Blunt Force Trauma,” a duet between Rønnenfelt and Erika de Casier that marries folk with dance-punk, sensuality with violence. A voice as gravelly and dark as his can be domineering, but de Casier’s pound of feathers is a deft match—“Soft against the hard, like saliva on concrete,” as Rønnenfelt puts it. A collaboration with another soft-spoken Danish pop singer is less successful: Fine’s vocals on “Kill Your Neighbor” get swallowed up in the storm of chimes, handclaps, and drum machine distortion.
On Speak Daggers, devotion is a destructive force, likened to bolts, bricks, and razor blades. “I love you/I hurt you even better,” Rønnenfelt sings on “Mona Lisa,” the record’s most devastating and danceable track. It opens with a blitz of gunshots; sharply bowed violins cut through its chorus as Rønnenfelt raps about classic artwork falling into disrepair as a metaphor for descent into addiction. “Crush the Devils Head” is another slow spiral into the inferno, where the delusion that one is immune to evil is as seductive as evil itself. “Crush the devil’s head/Lord knows he’s made a devil out of you,” Rønnenfelt slurs. A syrupy drum beat underscores it all, occasionally sputtering out or jerking awake. “Love How It Feels” inches toward conclusions (“This generation’s not free”), but winds up too vague to feel complete. “USA Baby” is the stronger single; Rønnenfelt has said it’s sung from the perspective of a non-American watching their American partner suffer under the nation’s regressive policies. The clank of chains in the foreground feels apt for an apocalyptic love song about the death rattle of an empire.
The sexually and spiritually charged post-punk that characterized Rønnenfelt’s work with Iceage has taken a slower, moodier turn in his solo material. Chugging rhythm sections that once catapulted him through motormouthed choruses now snag and stretch, often punctuated by high-pitched “ooh-oohhhh” ad-libs. While his vocal delivery on Speak Daggers skews more Lil Peep than Nick Cave, his songwriting remains concerned with violence, corruption, and holy turmoil. “If this is a prison, then the world is one,” he declares on “World Prison,” the song that most resembles Iceage’s ragged punk poetry, now painstakingly stretched across Speak Daggers as Rønnenfelt carves out a niche in the gray space between folk, post-punk, and cloud rap. He’s Denmark’s resident bard of disaffection, but there are no winners here. Each death is a mercy killing, each victory pyrrhic.
