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Rating: The fury within.
If Audioslave's debut has already bored you after a few listens, if you think Perry Farrel & Co. have lost their edge, if you still lament the heart-wrench absence of At The Drive In, if grunge, garage, and metal disappoint you because they've become just a matter of appearances... Then listening to the new Icarus Line album might console you.
Black Flag, Birthday Party, The Stooges, Jesus Lizard, Shellac, Black Heart Procession, Spiritualized, and Ink & Dagger. These are the proclaimed influences of the Los Angeles-based Icarus Line, a band partly hardcore, partly metal, and partly alternative rock. In other words, nothing new under the sky, but I feel compelled to highlight this band for their musical attitude, aimed at deconstructing the entire '90s era into a truly evolved and yet loyal taste.
The Icarus Line are the new heralds of a sound that is an uncomfortable and nerve-wracking mixture, relentless and heavily imposed with devoted intensity on the influences mentioned earlier. In the words of vocalist Joe Cardamone: "The music we make is meant to make us hate...". One thing is certain, this quintet is doing nothing to endear themselves to the show business or sector journalists, but V2 still wanted to take a shot by releasing Penance Soiree, the second album after the decent success at home of their debut Mono (2001).
In Penance Soiree, we find spontaneous fervor and frantic musical movement (which some purists might find excessive, almost baroque, redundant, exaggerated), supporting the frontman Caradamone (who screams and shouts like few others in the world), alternating moments of pure fury with those of surprising and piercing melodic intensity. Cardamone has an interesting voice, capable of binding the various influences declared by the band, giving them balanced plausibility and ferocity.
Thirteen tracks in total on Penance Soiree, an uncomfortable album (even in its politicized lyrics), extreme, yet damn compelling and gripping. What distinguishes this band from others in vogue these days is the right dose (meaning a lot) of Grit, with a capital G: sharp, clever, determined, fierce. Quite an achievement, considering the heavy musical predecessors of the band.
The Icarus Line are abrasive, biting, very professional, and truly badass inside. This quintet will inevitably win you over, despite all their attempts to make you hate them.
Recommended for those who do not suffer from heart conditions.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers (04:27)
Swimming in addiction. Broadcast children live in fiction.
Awake in lying shame, tweaked twilight sighs as she counts her money.
Devils got my brain. All narrow escapes. Don’t want to feel his hands again.
When fever blisters remember this advice: Believe in your own lies.
I couldn’t quite describe all the tricks in your look.
If comfort in skin come from within, then why can’t I get some for free?
Come on. Lord, everybody’s tryin to die these days.
Sinking in oblivion. Keep constant love affairs.
Angel got my heart, holds hard the pieces so it don’t fall apart.
We can hear you talk, got secret spies to tape you in the dark.
Doll, don’t live off the edge. Sleep in bed alone.
Blood dripping down her nose. Getting it all over her clothes.
Guess comfort in skin, don’t come from within.
She looks like she could use some help. I might have to help myself.
I can’t stop thinking about what I’m gonna do to you.
02 Spit on It (01:53)
This is a list in no particular order of the things that can keep a man stuck inside the fear of outside.
The cannibal clerks that make mistakes only to blame themselves on you.
Grease in the palms of giant companies that should be building bombs.
Fastback frills that curdle over weeks give me the chills.
Prevent awareness!
Lost advice generously spilling from the mouths of decrepit casualties who save their souls from forces
that breed control. It wasn't always this way. Industry slaves catch the wave that kills art for pay.
I'm gonna feed you your children and eat from your bowl. Sorely sought sounds more like poorly taught.
Prevent awareness!
Weather and feather. Ignored and vilified.
This ain't no list. There ain't no order. Keep your head stuck inside.
Fear of outside. You're stuck on inside. You suck on inside. Let's go out.
03 On the Lash (04:00)
Feel like something’s always been wrong.
Love of life is hitting way too strong.
May be we were born too late. May be not born at all.
Lets try and cure your latest pains.
Prescribe the life that’s driving me insane.
Tragic turn of fatal flaws. My heart’s burnt to black.
Feel like the storms come to cut me down.
On the lash, it’s time to get the hell out of this town.
Attention spans a moment’s escape.
These escapes they come so small.
Tragic turns and curses the walls.
Mine ain’t coming back, but I can fake it.
All the best learn to live life like a vampire.
And tell their stories to the campfire.
Doesn’t everybody know they gotta lose themselves once in a while?
Sleep all day just to kill time. Let the sun slide out of the sky.
Doesn’t everybody know?
I can feel it. Can’t you feel it now? Feels like stealing.
Come on lets start the healing. Gimme feeling.
04 Caviar (03:15)
Looking like she needs a miracle, out here so late just looking for a drug.
Give her something so she can fall in love. True love hits like death from above.
Let’s dance to the beat of a different drug. She wants to feel real.
Let’s get protection out of thin air. We sell injection. Give me perfection.
I’ll sleep on the floor. Tell them you were alone. They’ll call you a whore.
Domesticated. Devastated. There’s no bright side.
You’ll make more. Bitch pay for my ride.
10 Meatmaker (02:10)
Trying to get clean just kept him out You know you lose your head when you fuck with that stuff Time time time time he got the most Time time time time he got the most Got Loaded, got locked up agian He said he dosnt have any real friends Get Loaded got locked up agian He dont have any real friends He'll talk about choking you in our sleep His momma dont want him around her kids Time time time time he got the most
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