Icarus Line - Oxford Zodiac, 6/7/2002

  by Julia Willis

published: 13 / 7 / 2002

intro

One of the big hitters of the current punk revival, American group the Icarus Line have been gigging in both the UK and Europe. Despite being the subject of a recent PB interview, Julia Willis thinks she has entered Hell at a recent Oxford show

Doubled over in agony, begging, crying, pleading for mercy as the relentless pounding and swirling of your ears filling up with blood disorientates you, the room flies round in chaos as your mouth forms the word - "Help"… …but the words don’t come. Panic wells up inside as you blink to clear your eyes from tunnel vision. The room spins as shards of sound and fragments of feedback ricochet from the remains of the crumbling walls and darkness descends. An eerie fragile dissonance shatters and breaks into barely perceptible debris that cuts you like glass…. He stares at you, his crystalline eyes boring into your skull, wide eyed and terrified, his hair hanging desperately, clinging limply to his face, eyes smeared a sickly red, hollow. Life has truly become this awful as his pleading tortured soul, grief stricken and wild, pauses whilst the demon takes him, feeding from his core of grief and angst. The drums beat a tattoo into your fragile mind, already fraught as the others writhe and seethe. The demon devours the convulsing boy as the pounding booms through the remains of the room shaking the foundations and rattling his vulnerable frame to destruction. Your senses are assaulted as he wails triumphant the frenzied sound expanding, the dissonance ringing through what’s left of your nervous, reeling mind. Imperceptible notes tumble through the heavy air and lie in heaps of decaying rubble as they hit the body of turgid noise ripping through the floor. The inverted guitarist’s pallid porcelain stare belies the screaming coming from his fingers as the demon hangs from the rafters grinding and pumping as he pants menacingly… "You’re gonna get it……. Here it comes…." The photographs that accompany this article were taken by Matthew Williams

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