Members of Ice Dragon have spent the past couple years exploring different musical ideas in outfits like The Cupboards, Brass Hearse, Panel, etc., and output from the mothership has slowed accordingly. The same band who put out 10 full-lengths and other short releases besides during 2010-2015 issued a two-songer EP called Broken Life (review here) in 2016, a single called “Into the Wasteland (Of Self)” in Jan. 2017, and on this past New Year’s Eve, the single “Mors Ontologica” as their latest work. It is under three minutes in length and takes even less time to bury its morose hook in the frontal cortex of the listener. With a deceptively complex arrangement of vocals atop a nodding instrumental progression, it blends the band’s roots in doom and some of their more experimentalist and psychedelic tendencies to an effective pulse of atmospheric melancholy.

The chorus, “Mors ontologica/Not all who sleep are dead,” could easily be taken as a statement about the band itself, but I wouldn’t speculate, and to expect Ice Dragon at this point to return to the frenetic pace of offerings they had a few years ago seems unrealistic. Stranger things have happened, but that doesn’t make it likely. Whether “Mors Ontologica” is a signal of a return to activity on any level from Ice Dragon will remain to be seen, but in the meantime, its balance between nuanced aesthetic and basic structure show just how much the band still has to say if they want to say it. Enjoy it for what it is and let the rest work itself out how it will.

They posted the lyrics with it on Bandcamp, so here they are:

Ice Dragon – Mors Ontologica

Written, Recorded and Mastered at Ron’s Wrecker Service.

Remember warmth
Remember time
Like fading colors
Passing by

Mors ontologica
Not all who sleep are dead

Smoke forms
From all that burns
Lean into nothing
Our hearts still yearn

Mors ontologica
Not all who sleep are dead

Ice Dragon is:
Ron – Vocals, Bass
Joe – Guitar
Brad – Drums

https://www.facebook.com/icedragonofficial
https://www.instagram.com/playingrecords/
https://icedragon.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/hotronscorcher

Ice Dragon, “Mors Ontologica”