Albums

Album Review: Icarus Down

[Album: contortions.mood.swings.and.the.inevitable.decay.of.relationships]
[Label: CPZ Records ]

Hailing from Slovenia, the four members of Icarus Down are an interesting and ambitious bunch. Clearly musicians after my own heart, they’ve made a concentrated effort to experiment and, in their own words, “be strange in a good way”.

Their debut full-length release, which I’m just going to call ‘contortions’ for the sake of this paragraph, was released in their home country last year, and we’ve only just got our hands on a copy here at Sonic Dice to give it a listen. Somewhat based on the mythological tale of Icarus and his doomed flight into the sun, it can be a bit difficult to take the band seriously at first glance. It’s all very well having these intricate ideas, but it’s easy to cover poor song writing with a convoluted story.

Opening track ‘wild.pets’, which creeps into life with a series of erratic noises, an intro that certainly wouldn’t be out of place on a Biffy Clyro album, suddenly replaces those noises for crunchy guitars and some interesting screaming vocals, a punchy kickstart to the album which makes you sit up and take notice. The song traverses the line between soaring vocals that climb over the dark combination of drums and guitars in the background and violent outbursts of contorted screams that close the track.

There are a few tracks that seem to just fill a hole in the album, notably the instrumental ‘the.escape’ which just passes by in a phase of self indulgent synthesiser rambing with a few heavy chords thrown in for good measure. For an album that has been designed with a collective story in mind, it seems out of place and doesn’t advance any of those concepts.

The band have stayed true to their promise of experimentation, constantly changing the pace of the album, mixing it up with much heavier tracks such as ‘venus’, which blazes along with distorted raging screams and pounding snare drums, or taking things down a peg or two, like ‘beluga.deathtrap’ does, that builds from an eerie atmosphere and strolls along with slow, deliberate vocals and some disturbing background mumbling.

It’s very difficult to find a niche that can help a band reach a wider audience. With so many new bands out on the likes of Myspace all vying for attention, the chances are almost impossible to get your music heard. Icarus Down have made a pretty good album here, varied and yet remaining fairly consistent in regards to the dingy atmosphere they create. The true question is whether a band who clearly have quite a bit of talent and some great ideas can fly over the almost insurmountable problems that stand before them, or if, like many others who hold such promise, will just burn up in the sun.

For fans of: Biffy Clyro, Tool, Khoma
Band link = Icarus Down

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