Listen to “The Holding Hand” by Iceage
“The Holding Hand,” a new song from the Danish punk band Iceage, is a slow crawl toward a fiery exorcism. The quintet (recently expanded to include guitarist Casper Morilla Fernandez) has been artfully swerving from thrashy chaos to grand, apocalyptic rock music for the past 10 years; this time around, they return to the latter mode, setting their dials to a villainous Bad Seeds slow burn. The band’s brooding performance and the raw, shaky vocals of Elias Bender Rønnenfelt stay within their comfort zone, but ambitious flourishes suggest new territory awaits them. A violin accompaniment from Nils Gröndahl adds a sense of symphonic grandeur, while eerie percussion clatters like distant wind chimes. After they finally arrive at a thunderous crescendo—“O limp-wristed god, limp-wristed god,” Rønnenfelt chants, his voice reverberated and layered to reach to the heavens—the moment seems to fade just as quickly as it arrived. It is an ominous transmission from a band who can summon a storm like few others.