Ice Age (Swe) - Demos [free download]

I don’t know how four Swedish women got together in the ’80s to play Bay Area-style thrash – but it happened.

The Swedish part I can understand. Where’s CD’s and cassette tapes go, so do influences. But the women part is more special. On their MySpace, Ice Age claim they were “the only true female thrash metal band in history ever”. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s plausible. I can think of a good number of women in death, black, and doom metal. But for women in thrash, only three come to my mind immediately – Sabina Classen of Holy Moses, Dawn Crosby of Détente, and Loana dP Valencia of Dreams of Damnation. So to have a whole band of women playing thrash truly was/is a novelty.

Ice Age’s bio actually isn’t that interesting. It runs the typical gamut of music industry (at one point Kim Fowley tried to get his hands on the band) and lineup problems (the band ended up being multi-nationality, which evidently helped cause its demise). The best bios I’ve found of Ice Age are here, here, and here.

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“Instant Justice” (official video)

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What’s more interesting is their music, which reminds me of Testament and Death Angel. It’s not the most intense stuff, but these women could sing and play, and their songs are solid. It’s a trip to hear female gang vocals, as gang vocals in heavy music are normally by hordes of dudes.

Above is their video for “Instant Justice” (note: the volume is very low). You can hear “The Final Decision”, my favorite Ice Age song, here. Their songs vary widely in feel, so these two aren’t completely representative. Fortunately, even though they never recorded a proper album, Ice Age have put up their demos for free download. Unfortunately, those are just up on their site, free of the ID3 tags that you OCD iTunes jocks crave.

So I’ve put ID3 tags on the demos and re-uploaded them. Enjoy perhaps the only all-female thrash band ever!

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DOWNLOAD: ICE AGE (SWE) – DEMOS

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