Ice, Sea, Dead People - If It’s Broken, Break It More

Ice Sea what they did there. Ice, Sea, Dead People look like nice, clean indie boys, but make totally filthy garage-worthy punk rock. The trick of their first record, ‘Teeth Union’ was to sustain such a full-tilt assault across a full-length album; they mostly succeeded, although it probably depends on the listener’s ability to withstand relentless, unfettered noise.

Guitars sound like they’re having the last vestiges of life being wrung from their necks, and the vocals sound like they’re being throttled on their way out, too. Cymbals sound like they’re being tossed down several flights of stairs. The formula wasn’t broken on ‘Teeth Union’, and yeah, it’s broken more here: there’s a few atonal attempts at harmonising on tracks like ‘Ultra Silence’, ‘Styes In My Eyes’ opens with some neat percussive splashes, and ‘Accept The Mystery’ has a bass line that rolls all over the top of the band, like an an enormous, frisky cat.

That trick of sustain - they’ve got it on some of the notes their fuzzbox-ridden guitars manage to wrench from somewhere deep inside - but as for ‘If It’s Broken, Break It More’, less so. It’s all a bit so-so, and there’s not much variation, so everything ends up being a wash of screams and shouts that sink the record in to an indistinct mist of distortion.