Album review: Iceage's 'You're Nothing'

This young Danish punk band began turning heads outside Copenhagen in 2011 with an arrestingly urgent debut, "New Brigade," and chaotic live shows that seemed to result often in some kind of physical violence. Now signed to a high-profile American indie label, Iceage appears cognizant of the demand to regenerate that electricity on its second album. "Pressure, pressure / Oh God, no!," Elias Bender Ronnenfelt howls not long into "Ecstasy," which opens "You're Nothing" with a death-disco snarl; later, in "Coalition," he spits the word "excess" four times in a row, as though warding off the threat of a complacent sophomore slump.

By Mikael Wood

February 19, 2013