Elias Rønnenfelt

Heavy Glory is the first solo album by Elias Rønnenfelt, who for the past 16 years has been the voice of Iceage, a band he co-founded at age 16. Heavy Glory is the sound of growth experienced by throwing himself into the world, created by someone whose only constant companions have been a pen and a guitar. The album tells stories of inspiration and perseverance in the face of chaos, isolation, and excess. The world he describes is a luminous chaos, and Rønnenfelt is immersed in it. And he knows how to be there.

Recorded in Copenhagen over the course of a year, Heavy Glory was shaped in moments and chapters. Rønnenfelt plays guitars, while Dan Kjær Nielsen of Iceage is on drums. Longtime collaborators pop up on the record, including Danish punk ’77 legend Peter Peter, while Joanne Robertson and Fauzia add vocal counterpoints on two tracks. “I’ve done it many times,” Rønnenfelt says about creating an album, “but capturing and crystallizing a record remains a unique ritual, only with different circumstances. We are capturing something that is hard to hold onto.”

The album’s first songs took shape in the spring of 2022, in that curious post-pandemic limbo in which the world was neither open nor closed. Tired of not being able to make music, Rønnenfelt announced to his fans and friends that he would play anywhere in Europe, at any venue, for anyone who would listen. So he would write songs on the road and play them the next day. It is these songs, born in the woods and living rooms, in bookstores and chapels, that form the beating heart of Heavy Glory.

The album explores everything lovers do, from the most desperate to the purest. The winding path of Heavy Glory is traversed by an elusive and shifting loving presence, appearing and disappearing between tracks, provoking Rønnenfelt, drawing him in and repelling him. “Like Lovers Do,” the opening track, begs him to be swept away “as lovers do.” “Close” describes the thin line between jealousy and protection, while “Unarmed” is a song of surrender. With the relentless beat of a drum machine, “Worm Grew a Spine” paints a portrait of an “empress” on the brink of opportunism, with a flurry of words and themes reminiscent of the lysergic ravings of Blonde on Blonde.