ICECROSS — Icecross (review)

Album · 1973 · Heavy Psych

4/5 · 2019-11-27
siLLy puPPy

Early hard rock and heavy metal was primarily limited to the British scene with obvious candidates like Black Sabbath and Budgie wresting control of the style away from its heavy psych origins however it didn’t take long for American bands like The Stooges, Blue Oyster Cult and eventually Van Halen to take the heavier aspects of hard rock into more demanding territories. One of the more interesting bands to emerge from this early blossoming of proto-metal was not from an English speaking nation at all but rather from the small nation of Iceland which found a power trio generating an excessively heavy sound for the year of 1973.

ICECROSS has been referred to as the first black metal band due to the album cover depicting a human skeleton, a monstrous counterpart along with a frosted over cross which represents some sort of anti-religious stance but despite the imagery forged in black and white evoking a future world that would adopt similar artistic expressions as a means of communicating more extreme misanthropic visions, ICECROSS’ sound was more akin to the early years of the NWOBHM which at 1973 was ahead of its time sounding as if the band’s sole self-titled album was recorded and released somewhere around the 1978-79 timeline. While borrowing from the early heavy psych of the 60s along with the heavier aspects of Leaf Hound, Sabbath, Pentagram and Uriah Heep, ICECROSS surprisingly developed an interesting early porto-type of metal outside the English speaking world.

The band consisted of the trio of Axel Einarsson (Guitar, Vocals), Ómar Óskarsson (Bass, Vocals) and Ásgeir Óskarsson (Drums, Vocals) and was something akin to an early Icelandic Rush without the Led Zeppelin influences. ICECROSS’s sole album is an amazingly confident ride through sizzling guitar riff passages, heavy percussive freneticism and distinct bass grooves that hinted at the influences from across the pond but offered a darker sound that took the gloomier moods of Sabbaths, a tad of King Crimsonian dystopia and melded it with the blues rock and heavier drives of bands like Elias Hulk, Iron Claw, Jerusalem. Dust and dozens of other early heavy rockers only ICECROSS increased the speed and volume creating a powerful display of early metal bombast.

Although hailing from Iceland, ICECROSS wisely selected English as the language for the lyrics and chose to craft all original tunes with no covers like many bands of the era outside of England were doing. The band was popular in Iceland but with a population of only a few hundred thousand found more success once they moved abroad to Copenhagen, Denmark where they recorded the sole album. Due to the band’s short existence the original album had become a desired collector’s item for decades before a long due remastered reissue emerged in the 21st century as interest in the early 70s material has risen. ICECROSS cranked out eight strong tracks that ranged from heavy metal rockers that incorporate blitzkrieg lightning fast guitar solos which wouldn’t become popular until the latter half of the decade. The band also crafted catchy bluesy rockers as well as darker doom laden passages that emphasized darker intent.

Everything is great about ICECROSS’ sole release. Heavy passages change it up with mellow more contemplative sections. Einarsson’s vocals are powerful and attack a wide octave range whereas the musicianship of the members is extraordinarily brilliant especially on the drums where Ásgeir Óskarsson delivered a more sophisticated style of playing not experienced in the heavy rock world at this stage. In many ways this band could be deemed a predecessor of the 80s scene except that probably nobody ever heard of them outside of Iceland and the Danish capital. While the heavy metal world may have caught up with ICECROSS without hearing their early powerful style of playing, this album has become a cult favorite for many seeking the origins of the metal universe and is not to be missed. While not exactly some long lost masterpiece, the album is surprisingly strong in its heavy metal stomp through an album’s worth of material. This is one band i wish would have stuck around longer.

more than 2 years ago
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siLLy puPPy wrote:

more than 2 years ago

As far as first metal song, many claim The Kinks did it with "You Really Got Me." Clear Light def had a good claim too. IMHO none of those are really metal though. Just heavier than usual psych or pop. Metal is more than heaviness. It's an attitude, a mystique and nobody did that before Sabbath. These debates will go on for eternity of course. Let's just call it all great music and categorize for our own purposes :)

siLLy puPPy wrote:

more than 2 years ago

It's kind of like comparing the New York scene to the American scene. Both are correct however NY would put emphasis on how local it was whereas American would encompass the entire nation. I still don't get how the UK countries make a bigger country. Welsh sounds cool as a language too. THere's some town that has like 60 letters!

adg211288 wrote:

more than 2 years ago

As a Brit I can confirm that Mike is right about the Welsh also being Brits. If you called them 'English' then that would be incorrect.

Unitron wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Clear Light's Street Singer was the first metal song, and Vincebus Eruptum was the first metal album imo.

siLLy puPPy wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Personally i consider the debut Sabbath album to be an entity of its own. It's definitely the first metal album but it's really the perfect marriage between the heavy psych of the 60s and the doomier side of metal that followed. While Deep Purple doesn't sound like true metal to me it certainly was a proto-metal band for all the keyboard oriented metal that came. I guess i generalize to a certain point but then take things by a case by case basis. I agree that labels just get slapped on and don't really tell the whole story. Well, anyways, i love this Icecross album! Very cool early metal from Iceland :)

Unitron wrote:

more than 2 years ago

I don't consider Led Zeppelin metal either, only a few songs. They were mostly blues, folk, and hard rock. Deep Purple I would say have a few metal albums, In Rock and Perfect Strangers are pure metal and maybe Machine Head. Fireball and Burn have a couple metal songs.

So you wouldn't consider Black Sabbath's debut metal? Because that's basically a heavy psych album (even though I wouldn't call it such, heavy psych to me is a new thing for modern psychedelic bands and the label just got slapped on to mean almost any 60's or 70's metal album that isn't Sabbath.)

siLLy puPPy wrote:

more than 2 years ago

It's not a technicality at all. The UK also referred to as Great Britain consists of Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. True the adjective for Wales is Welsh but all of those countries unified to create Great Britain. The adjective is British.

Yeah, Night Sun had some metal elements and so did some bands like Silberbart but those were outsiders in the predominant Krautrock scene that incorporated trippy jams. Where someone places the line between early metal and hard rock is fairly arbitrary and personal but i never considered bands like Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple metal. They were pseudo-prog rock due to the classical aspects and happened to flirt with heavier rock. In my view, heavy metal came into being once the heavy psych elements were dropped and the blues rock was emphasized with heftier bravado :)

Unitron wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Not really, only by technicality. Whatever though.

Yeah, there is a difference. Hard rock lacked the psychedelic element that metal had. Heavy metal was birthed from blues rock and psychedelic rock put through a heavy filter. So heavy psych is really just heavy metal.That's what Black Sabbath was in the 70's, bands like Deep Purple, Budgie, Lucifer's Friend, and Sir Lord Baltimore were closest to 80's heavy metal (Which is generally considered the 'heavy metal sound'). I'd argue that a German band was probably the most ahead of the curve, considering Night Sun was playing the earliest examples of what could be called thrash and also fusing jazz in 1972.

siLLy puPPy wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Ah, you're right about Sir Lord Baltimore but Wales is a part of Great Britain which makes Budgie British. There's a difference between early heavy metal and hard rock. The Brits were definitely dishing out the heavier goods. Germany and Japan were still finding bands infused with heavy psych and psychedelic rock of the 60s but it wouldn't take long for the rest of the world to catch up.

Unitron wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Sir Lord Baltimore was American and Budgie was Welsh, not British. Heavy metal was far from being mainly limited to Britain, it was birthed in the US and had a pretty equal amount of bands spread across between the US, Britain, Germany, and Japan.

Anyway, good album. Nightmare's probably the best song on here.