Iceage: Boys keep swinging

After exploding onto the scene in a blaze of teenage fury, Iceage evolved into one of the most compelling and influential bands of the late 2000s, while frontman Elias Rønnenfelt became a genre-hopping journeyman and sought-after collaborator. The band’s latest album, For Love of Grace & the Hereafter, sees them rediscover an intensity and urgency as only they can.

Elias Rønnenfelt has just made a regrettable purchase. “I just bought a microwave and I shouldn’t have,” the Iceage frontman tells me, in literally the first words out of his mouth during our interview. Over Zoom, his piercing eyes lock straight into the camera lens between pulls on a cigarette and sips from a coffee mug, as the Copenhagen sun gleams warmly in the background. “I went to a normal electronics store but I was surprised about the steep pricing of new microwave ovens,” he continues, loquaciously. “So I bought it at a used junk store for like ten pounds. It was pretty dusty but now I see that it’s disgusting inside as well. I just tried cleaning it and this really rank smell I can’t put my finger on has permeated my entire kitchen.”

His bandmate, Johan Surrballe Wieth, is nodding along quietly in another box on my screen. “May I make some follow-up enquiries on this purchase?” he chimes in. “What are your dietary needs since you bought this microwave? What is your dream use for it?” 

This dry, slightly surreal opening to our interview is somewhat unexpected, especially from a band that, in their early days, had a reputation for being famously moody, phlegmatic and stubborn in interviews. However, the Danish group, who have been together since their teenage years, forming almost 20 years ago, have grown up and changed significantly, both personally and musically. 

Their 2011 debut New Brigade – fusing Joy Division post-punk with the tightly coiled intensity and frantic noise of post-hardcore – was a breakthrough record and deemed one of the albums of the year by countless publications. But they struggled with the attention and interviews, gaining a tricky reputation in the process. They even faced accusations of flirting with fascist imagery and came under fire for playing with a band they had booked that had the n-word in their name. In an open and honest interview with Pitchfork years later, Rønnenfelt said he was dumbfounded by the former but deeply ashamed and embarrassed by the latter. 

Moving beyond their teenage edgelord phase, over six albums their sound has evolved to embrace the kind of atmospheric, gothic-tinged rock The Birthday Party were known for, while folding in jazz, art rock and the rowdy energy heard on Rum Sodomy & the Lash-era Pogues. In recent years, a wave of artists – from Shame to The Murder Capital – have carried echoes of the band’s sound, while tours with Mitski and Interpol have underlined their influence. 

On their latest album, For Love of Grace & the Hereafter, the band wanted to create something as in-the-moment as possible. So when their record label, Mexican Summer, suggested that if they could spin the record around in two and half weeks, they could release it this June, they leapt at the chance. “This is our ideal situation to release music,” Rønnenfelt says. “While it’s still interesting, sometimes you deliver a finished product and then it’s out in eight months and you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, I sort of vaguely remember doing that and being excited about that shit, but I’m thinking about something else now.’ So this album is actually a pretty clean reflection of where we are as a band. We haven’t had time to grow tired of it.” 

That said, the period was pretty full on. “It was a lot of people working very, very hard to make it happen,” Wieth says. “So it was really demanding of us, as well as of the whole machinery around it.” There wasn’t a lot of time to rest. “Nis [Bysted], our guy [producer], didn’t sleep for two weeks,” Rønnenfelt says. “But it was great. It’s kind of how we want things to be: intense and urgent. But in that process of not leaving the studio, after a while, it felt like you were a submarine worker or on a spaceship or something.” The band harnessed this relentless, hermetic environment into the music. “Some elements of cabin fever presented themselves,” Rønnenfelt says. “But it also created this super-compressed space and time where everything was just about the record. There wasn’t room for dwelling or letting things breathe. And so there was an intensity that came with that, that somehow helped manifest this record.”

The result is an album of raw, sparky songs that barely break the three-minute mark. On Match Head Girl – a track that’s as fuzzy and scratchy as it is prettily melodic – they almost recall Pavement, while The Weak sounds like The Gun Club trying out pub rock for size. It’s a record in which you can feel the fun being had – from Rønnenfelt’s often sardonic lyrics (“I love you in an ominous way”) and the little yelps punctuating songs, to the wide-eyed, hard-grinning energy emanating from it, which feels like the by-product of a garage band going back to basics and bashing it out for kicks. “When we were in the studio and did a take that felt like this might be the take, there was almost a sense of instant grief kicking in,” Rønnenfelt explains. “Because I loved playing this together so much.” Wieth adds: “There’s not a song on this record that I don’t have great joy playing. It’s very fun.” 

As Iceage have morphed from buzzy new upstarts into stalwarts of the alternative world, Rønnenfelt has himself quietly become an increasingly influential figure in recent years. There are his collaborations with Dean Blunt and Yung Lean, praise from Cameron Winter, who singled out Rønnenfelt’s solo album Heavy Glory as one of his favourite records of 2025, remixes by The Dare, and photographs of him hanging out with Earl Sweatshirt. But returning to Iceage is always special to him. “Doing an Iceage album, this thing that we’ve been doing since we were kids, is almost like a sacred act,” he says. “It’s not something you just piss away on a whim. It needs to be this fully formed thing that pieces itself together when the time is ready. Doing the solo records has been something that was necessary for me to mature into whatever Iceage should be next. I had stored up all this pensive Iceage energy that was ready to explode.”

Wieth echoes the sentiment. “No matter how long it’s been since we were in a rehearsal space, I still love doing it every single time,” he says. “I could not be without it. And that would be regardless of whether anyone was putting out our music, because I have such a love of playing with these  four people.” 

Despite Rønnenfelt drawing interest from ever-widening circles, he’s not looking to jet off to LA anytime soon. The band is still very much a Copenhagen outfit. “We’re deeply rooted in this city,” Rønnenfelt says. “It’s filled with people that really know us, and a real sense of community, both in relation to art and on a personal level. There’s been times in my life where I’ve been screaming to get the fuck away from Copenhagen, but we’ve got real loved ones here and a very strong chosen family. That’s fucking valuable.”

In terms of creativity and inter-band dynamics, but also on a personal front, you get the impression that Iceage are in a particularly good spot at the moment. “I mean, with extreme precaution, I say yes,” Rønnenfelt says, with typically bone-dry delivery. “I feel like there’s been very few moments in my life where this kind of stability has been present. I have a tendency to get so loaded in pessimism and this idea that nothing can ever sort of truly just be good. But some things are just kind of good.”

What brought about this feeling of clarity and optimism? “Well, from a personal standpoint, I sorted out some things in my life,” he says. “I stopped being as self-destructive, and that created a world of good in itself. I think in the past there’s been more flirtations with escapism and these kinds of things, whereas maybe the mentality of this record is facing the chaos of life more head-on.” 

At a time when many groups start to wane, splinter or buckle under the fatigue of it all, it’s heartening to hear a band at this stage in their career still so full of spark, spunk and unity. And the group’s steadfast DIY ethos seemingly extends to capitalism-defying pursuits of cheap electronic goods. So, what the fuck is he going to do about this dirty, rank microwave that’s stinking out his house? “Maybe I’ll leave it in the garbage,” he says. “Because I just want it out of my life.”