Kevin Bronson on August 10th, 2013

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[Note: Because of Buzz Bands LA’s tech woes last week, we’re a bit tardy in posting our coverage of last weekend’s events. So now we play catch-up:]

The decade-plus exploits of the Icarus Line are the stuff of legends: Bad-boy antics, disintegrating relationships, self-immolating habits, lineup changes, record-industry misadventures, utter and public contempt for anything reeking of sellout … and one album of sheer brilliance (“Penance Soiree,” 2004), along with enough other flashes that every time Joe Cardamone birthed something new you paid attention.

All that history attracted a too-small crowd of curiosity-seekers to the Roxy Theatre on Friday, Aug. 2, for the Icarus Line’s release show for their fifth album “Slave Vows.” There wasn’t a lick of mayhem to be found, only a back-loaded lineup (the show was part of the Sunset Strip Music Festival), with Cardamone and his sextet putting an exclamation point on the evening with 45 minutes of vicious bloodletting.

• Photos by Carl Pocket

“Slave Vows” is an uncompromisingly ambitious record – no singalongs here, kids – and in the hands of the band’s current lineup the songs came to life in all their defiant glory. Bassist Lance Arnao is the only other Icarus Line original in the band with Cardamone these days, with long-timers Alvin DeGuzman (keys) and Ben Hallett (drums) joined by guitarists John Bennett and Bryan Tulao. Together, they captured the undulating, cinematic vibe of an album that seems to drone through the desert one moment, howl through the swamp the next and explode in Stooges ecstasy in still others. It’s psych-rock made by punk-rockers, capable of invoking foreboding and danger without a lot of the posturing common on the current indie (or Sunset Strip, for that matter) scene.

Equally unforgiving were Retox, the grindcore quartet fronted by Justin Pearson (the Locust). The music on their recent release on Epitaph, “YPLL,” is incredibly physical, and the Roxy gig was a mosh pit short of being proper. In one of Retox’s atonal minute-and-a-half blasts, they unleashed more aggression, and made a stronger statement, than the first four bands of the night combined.

Leading into Retox was a muscular, no-frills set from local power trio Wake Up Lucid, who turned the lights down and the power up with a slab of heavy blues.

Playing earlier in the evening were Cherri Bomb, Gateway Drugs, Badflower and Lido Beach.

||| Live: The Icarus Line plays the Buzz Bands LA / White Iris Records stage Saturday night at Echo Park Rising.