No genre above all else can produce the same simultaneous embodiment of agony and ecstasy quite like an out of nowhere punk record can. Think The Pistol's 'Pretty Vacant', The Ramones 'I Wanna be Sedated' or Black Flag's 'Six Pack', all songs that antagonize and celebrate their crutches rather than wallowing in them. Copenhagen punks Iceage appropriately titled 'Ecstasy' reverberates along a similar tangent, an aggressive encapsulation of the catharsis that ensues from such tender embrace of one's own suffering.
Torn between a driving disco beat submerged between layers of scum distortion and a more traditional angular hardcore breakdown occurring during parts in between, 'Ecstasy' is one of the most aesthetically intriguing things to emerge during the foremost month of 2013. The loose dance sections are haunted by a melancholy that leaks plaintive lyrics of anguish - "another rock upon my head/each night I lay awake in bed"", supported by the punctuation of deep bass notes that foster a sense of dread only matched by the sense of urgency engendered through raw punk delivery.
The debt to the similar sonic negation of Witch House/Drag contemporaries is both visible and aural. As supported by seedy and sweat filled rave scenes, this existential foreboding gets transferred to the site of communal gathering - the group release. Punk subculture is once again fetishisized heavily, and it looks great. Burning flowers, passionate making out, poorly timed dancing. Iceage clearly have an adept understanding of how punk can be used as expression of some terrible things, ugly things, but with such poetry that a nihilistic reversal occurs whereby the profane becomes profund. Iceage's chaotic disco of misery becomes your site of ecstatic catharsis. Not quite the release of pressure the song begs for, more rather just writhing in the orgiastic agony of your quagmire.
