When Iceage arrived on the scene back in 2011 they delivered everything anybody could want from a post-punk band: almost catchy tunes hammered out with fucked off guitars and whiplash drums at the speed of light. The Danes also had a secret weapon in photogenic front man Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, perfect up front with his earnest caterwauling and complete onstage distain.
You can get too much of a good thing though, and while Rønnenfelt’s presence within a band like Iceage makes sense, here in Marching Church – his solo side project – he comes off like a cruise ship Richard Hell, irritatingly gurning his way through nine tracks that you won’t remember once they’ve finished. Beneath the warbling there are actually some half-decent ideas, albeit less than fully formed.
The spacey guitar on ‘Up for Days’ sounds like ‘War’-era U2 (no bad thing, for sure, seriously) and ‘2016’ is a bag of tricks but it never quite settles on a refrain. Too often though, ‘Telling It Like It Is’ simply grates on the ear – but at least it’s forgettable. Every cloud…
