Top 25 Songs
Outgoing songs:
Wraiths (
Crypt Trip / ST EP)
The Message (
Sasquatch / IV)
The Revisit (
Noctum / Final Sacrifice)
Evolution Blues (
NYMF / From the Dark)
Tilted World (
Earthen Grave / ST)
PARANOID Spotlight on:
ICE DRAGON - STEEL VEINS b/w QUEEN OF THE BLACK HARVESTAt the number 11 spot on this week's list, we've got Ice Dragon, once again returning to their natural home territory, the Paranoid Doom Charts. The New England quartet's productivity has been of Himalayan proportions over the past two years. As a matter of fact, they've been so prolific in their output, it's become something of a running joke in the online underground community. The band is well known for releasing music in wildly varying styles under various monikers with drummer / vocalist Ron and guitarist Joe also involved in other projects, including Qosmic Qey, The Mangled Dead and Serpentipede. This calendar year the band proper has released an EP (The Soul's Midnight), a full-length album (Born a Heavy Morning) and this single. In 2012 Ice Dragon released three full-lengths and various other works on singles and compilations, etc. So on the surface, it would appear the band's creativity has shifted down a gear or two, until you analyze the actual output.
The more you listen to 'Born a Heavy Morning' the more brilliant you realize the album is. It begins with the dreamy AM radio friendly "Wakin' Up", which leads into an interlude where an alarm clock goes off. The heavy morning leads into bleak afternoon sludge wherein "The Deeper You Go", the more hopeless things become "We Are The Hopeless" before the character of the song finally admits defeat on the doomy, "I'm Lost". The point here is that the band pulled out all the stops, suiting the music in a menage of style to suit the overall narrative story being told. It's the kind of album that's not going to appeal to just anyone, not on first listen anyway. Ice Dragon have never shied away from challenging listeners and fans by being constantly on the stylistic move stylistically.
And that's what makes this single so interesting. It's almost a concession, a thank you to fans for dealing all the stylistic challenges the band has presented over the course of the past couple years because this new single features a "classic 'Ice Dragon' sound on these jams. No funny business." It's interesting because for a time the band seriously considered permanently turning to a classic AM radio pop style of music. Well, obviously they didn't and we have the riff saturated, doomy "Steel Veins" backed with "Queen of the Black Harvest". Ice Dragon proves that all things are possible and that the only limits are self-imposed. This single goes towards proving that Ice Dragon isn't messing around, everything they've done has been what they've been inspired to do and that's the only way it could be. It proves that every now and then the band just wants to rock out with some fuzzy jams and like everything else the band does, it comes from a genuine place within them and they do it enthusiastically. You can download the single for FREE or pay what you want on bandcamp by following the link at the listing above.
