Kevin Bronson on August 16th, 2018

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If you haven’t seen the quasi-biographical film “The Icarus Line Must Die,” we won’t spoil the ending for you. But you should, because it will contextualize Joe Cardamone’s next lifetime.

Cardamone fronted the spectacularly uncompromising band for nearly two decades, eight albums and a mountain of trouble (some of it self-inflicted). And toward the end, the world around him seemed to crumble: His wife struggled with severe depression; friend and Icarus Line bandmate Alvin DeGuzman died of cancer; friend and frequent collaborator Annie Hardy of Giant Drag lost both her young child and partner just months apart; and the Icarus Line finally dissolved in 2015 after a tour with Scott Weiland ended with Weiland’s overdose and death.

Now Cardamone is unveiling his new project, Holy War, via a film (out. Aug. 25) and mixtape (out Aug. 30). Like his rock band’s searing guitar-driven music, Cardamone again operates with no holds barred and all wounds exposed. Only now the music is seething cold-wave, his sneering narratives built over cavernous synths, along with some acidic commentary (see “Chasin Bentley”).

Cardamone directed and Jacob Mendel shot the ultra-violent (you’ve been warned) video for “East Side No One” — which Cardamone capsulizes as “just another hot night on the fucked side of Los Angeles.”

“The music is some kind of cross between Travis Scott and Scott Walker getting into a gun battle,” he says. “The entire story was shot in eight hours with a bare-bones crew that could move fast and paint a serious portrait of hubris, excess and ultimately fated demise. All the videos from the Holy War collection of music are connected but this chapter proved to be the most brutally violent so far.”

||| Watch: the video for “East Side No One”

||| Also: Watch “Asleep at the Heel”

||| Screening/live performance: The Holy War film release party is Saturday, Aug. 25, at Evil Spirit Engineering (420 N. Varney), featuring performances by Plexi, Holy War and VOWWS. More info here.

||| Also: Stream the Holy War album here