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Music

Iceage

ICEAGE with METZ and NOTHING at Parts & Labour (1566 Queen West), Wednesday (August 17). $10. RT, SS, TW. See listing


The members of Iceage are either rebellious, enigmatic, violent punk bullies or just a group of bored, introverted teenagers from Denmark. Most likely they’re both.

“We don’t try to be mysterious,” says 19-year-old lead singer/guitarist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt over the phone from the band’s tour van, on their way to Minneapolis. “But a lot of people think we are.”

That reputation likely stems from the images on their website of fans bloodied from moshing, videos that employ aggressive occult imagery and a sound that galvanizes the cold, angular groove of no wave and post-punk with the raw, primal urgency of early hardcore.

But it’s also likely related to their media-shyness. You know it’s going to be rough going when a band’s own publicist warns you that you might not want to do an interview. Young Rønnenfelt’s answers are terse and direct to the point of insolence.

But that’s a good fit with their heavily hyped debut, New Brigade (What’s Your Rupture?), an album packed so densely that it barely lets you catch your breath. Iceage’s intense concerts, similarly, rarely pass the 20-minute mark.

“We could play longer sets if we wanted to,” says Rønnenfelt. “But that would be boring.”

Spoken like a true teenager.

music@nowtoronto.com

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