Friday 24 August 2018

Ice Queen - I and II (2018)


Here's my take on the two releases of Ice Queen, the new project of Leeches of Lore's leader Steve Hammond. The debut was released back in March while the second was just unleashed earlier this week. The reviews are part of a new thematic series focused on "ice" related bands!





Ice Queen – Ice Queen (2018)

Ice Bucket Challenge I

I was saddened to hear of Leeches of Lore's recent termination but I was confident that their leader Steve Hammond would continue to produce top notch music and I wasn't wrong. Ice Queen, his new solo project, is basically a continuation of his former band with many twists and spins.

The first really noticeable element is the fact that it's pretty much a voluntarily raw project and it’s much heavier than what Leeches of Lore did on their latest albums. Hammond seems to be fine with just unleashing simple but efficient ideas with almost an approach similar to automatism. Motel of Infinitely, LoL’s swansong showed heavier tendencies but Ice Queen isn’t as eclectic and varied as its former identity. Hammond increased the noise, crust and thrash metal influences and decreased the duration of his songs. That direction made Ice Queen really intense, almost like a grindcore approach. The guitars are thick but sharp and the bass is loud and filling (check out “Burrowing”) and there’s hardly any time to rest except for the country ballad of “Black Water”, a stylistic influence much more prevalent in Leeches of Lore or Hammond’s other non-metal projects.

Ice Queen are hard to classify, really. The structures are quite simple but the coating has all kind of things to make it shiny and exciting. It’s like if you took NWOBHM heavy metal but added a bunch of iconoclastic thrash and Melvins-esque sludge to the formula. It’s just fun riffs with an identity and soaring fun vocals. Hammond can’t do no wrong as far as I’m concerned.

87%










Ice Queen – Ice Queen II (2018)

Ice Bucket Challenge II

The second release of Ice Queen expands where its predecessor left off and brings out some new things to the fold. While the debut showcased a brand new take of Hammond’s peculiar metal sound he spent a decade exploring with Leeches of Lore, II has some fun with the new sound.

Ice Queen is once again built upon a core of fast paced heavy metal with noise, hardcore and thrash elements but wait, there’s more! There’s layers of experimentation here such as the minimalistic dark ambient of “An Abandoned City” or the noise and voice effects of the closer “Quiet”. There’s also a bunch of metal experimentation such as the doom/death riffs of “The Witch King of Urbana” which are intertwined with eerie bits of electronica or the ghostly drone of “Dreams, Dreaming” and it all works. Hammond’s signature special move is that he’s able to assemble a wide array of styles together to form a solid, oozing mass capable of grasping your interest till you’ve heard the same twenty minutes album on repeat.

Regardless of the experimentation, there’s still some pretty metallic bangers like the thrashy/sludgey anthem of “Blizzard of Ants” with its harsh screams or the incisive Mastodon-esque “The Bunt”. All in all, Ice Queen II justifies its existence by exploring other themes than the debut. It would had been easy to release them as a “full length” album of forty minutes but I like that shorter format. It’s easy to focus on the different strengths of those to the point compositions and gather everything you can from them.

84%
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