Iceage
For Love of Grace & the Hereafter
Mexican Summer
Jun 05, 2026 Web Exclusive
As the rowdy intro track “Ember” bursts into flames, you can tell Iceage’s new album For Love of Grace & the Hereafter is going to be something special. Later, “Star” shines as a perfect slacker anthem destined to be a festival favorite.
Work for their sixth album, mixed and produced by the Danish band plus long-trusted collaborator Nis Bysted, started immediately after singer Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s first solo release, 2024’s Heavy Glory, and was recorded at the remote Silence Studio nestled in rural Sweden, close to the Norwegian border. The result is a lean record with boundless enthusiasm and raucous energy calling back to ’90s art punk and the mid-’00s garage rock revival. If you didn’t know they were Danes working in a quaint setting, you’d swear they were a gang of New York alcoholic speed freaks that had somehow stumbled into a practice room and bash at the instruments they’ve found. You can almost smell the booze on Rønnenfelt’s breath as he perfects his Americanized drawl.
“Match Head Girl” leans into the thrashed, wiry Sonic Youth guitars, complete with sporadic bursts of distortion, albeit with Steve Malkmus on the mic. The erratic barrage of bruised love lyrics on “Salve For Every Sore” could be taken straight from the pages of Allen Ginsberg, whilst “mother-of-pearl” is exactly what all The Strokes fans are praying for on their eagerly awaited new album, Reality Awaits.
For Love of Grace & the Hereafter is unrelenting in its infectious optimism. It’s hard to believe the boys have been on the go for 18 years, because their latest offering has all the momentum and ramshackle charm of a newly discovered band of the moment showing off their killer new debut. (www.iceage.dk)
Author rating: 8/10
Average reader rating: 8/10
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