Sometime in 2010, I had my had blown off by a quirky, jerky buzzsaw racket of an album called ‘Teeth Union’. It had to get the full 10/10. On to 2013 and Ice, Sea, Dead People are touring their follow-up album, the snappily-titled ‘If It’s Broken, Break It More’. I couldn’t really pas up on the opportunity to check them out live. The lineup promised a night of noisiness, and with local ales from the Burley Street Brewhouse on draught at £2.25, an evening spent upstairs at The Packhorse seemed the perfect remedy for the post-Bank Holiday blues.
Leeds power trio Two Trick Horse know their US hardcore and beyond and seem to have assimilated the entire Tough & Go catalogue, along with selected highlights of the Amphetamine Reptile roster and blended it together with a hefty dash of Fugazi. A high-pitched snare crack and teethgrinding Rickenbacker bass buzz drive the sound, with shouty vocals and some Shellac style tempo changes make for a suitably angular and abrasive set.
Buffalo Bones were another power trio, but a very different proposition. With a crisper, cleaner sound and a more effects-heavy guitar style, they were more overtly accessible than Two Trick Horse, but equally, lacked the power. Still, they were supremely tight and good fun, as well as providing something of a respite before the onslaught that was to come from the headliners.
Ice, Sea, Dead People had been milling around quietly during the other bands’ sets looking seriously out of place, a cluster of nerds with glasses and side partings who laid out their merch stall with autistic precision. Setting up their kit they looked no less ungainly or self-conscious. I observed from a dark corner, sipping my pint of SPA as Dead Kennedys and The Jesus Lizard grated through the PA.
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Onstage, they’re completely different people: the glasses are off and they’re punishing their instruments and our ears with salvoes of abrasive noise, cranking everything up to eleven and wringing ten shades of feedback from the amps with a sadistic ferocity. Drawing almost equally on the two albums, they thrash out an eardrum-shredding squall of jerky punk racket that ricochets in all directions at once. From the first, ‘Brrrr’ and ‘Grean Tea’ sear the aural receptors, while from the latter, both sides of the double A-side single, ‘You Could be a Model’ / ‘Ultrasilence’ are a sonic blitzkrieg. The title track from the new album provides the penultimate assault before the blistering 40-minute set concludes with a full-throttle ‘Hence: Elvis’.
Ice, Sea, Dead People will never be a big venue band or mainstream contenders: and that’s the way it should be. Instead, they’re everything a cult act should be: obtuse, challenging, singular... and awesome.
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