To Die On Ice has today premiered their new single titled ‘Baccanale’, releasing this Friday, from their upcoming album ‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’ (translated as Pan of the Abyss), dropping February 6th via Italian label Subsound Records and Norwegian label Gymnocal Industries.
Doom with gaze in a style that crosses those dark post modern bands from the glory days with bits of David Lynch, Leonard Cohen and other bits of dark surrealness and under the radar that stays in the fringes where true originality and sheer coolness resides. ‘Baccanale’ is a dark exploration of the avant-garde through the eyes of the disenfranchised. The soul of the track is almost jazz in execution and delivery with dystopian flare and that feeling of dread that we all secretly long for.
This is the perfect introduction for what is to come with ‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’ in that it feels as much of an experience as it does a deep and interesting listen.
‘Baccanale’ officially drops this Friday.
Q&A
How did To Die On Ice form and how did you come up with the name and what is it’s meaning?
To Die On Ice was born from the demise or the dusk of other musical projects each of us had before To Die On Ice. Even though the initial intention was to transpose the more minimalist jazz/blues side of the Lynchian dimension into a disturbing and sexy doom abyss, the fact that none of us had the faintest idea of what that actually meant created the conditions for something immediate and sincere, where ideas that we hadn’t even imagined at first naturally converged — such as the hints of soul and the screamo parts. As for the origin and meaning of the name, it might be far more interesting if it remains unexplained, open to free interpretation.
How would you describe ‘Baccanale’ to someone who has never heard it?
Baccanale is part of ‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’, an album that moves along a narrative flow, arbitrarily choosing which passages to translate from the story it chases (rather than follows). The track describes the moment when the two protagonists enter a venue where a party is taking place, which progressively turns into an orgy of violence and unleashed, furious instincts. Not by chance, the subtitle is ‘Where Paul Saves Bacall at a Party of Wolves and Crows.’ Musically, I believe there is an atmospheric first part that, in intention — especially through the sax — evokes lascivious situations and vaguely Ethiopian suggestions (mostly because at that time we were listening to that stuff), followed by a second part that plunges into a granite, noisy post-blues.
How would you describe your “open workshop” approach for To Die On Ice?
The idea is simply that there should be a shared vision and that anyone who wants to manipulate it with their own language has full freedom to do so. In this specific case, with ‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’, we managed to combine the music with a literary and, I’d say, graphic component (together with the album, a short story written by me and illustrated by Vitt Moretta — a comic artist who has also collaborated with Simon Hanselmann, that you may know — will be released by Edizioni Fantasma), and with a video projection in the form of a visual album directed by photographer Lulù Withheld, which develops a fragment of the aforementioned story to bring to life a semi-combinatory editing experiment (the editing is by Alessandro, who plays the drums) as long as the album itself.
And speaking of the record, the cover is the result of a reinterpretation by Caterina Birolo, who also designed the artwork for ‘Una Specie Di Ferita’ (2022) and laid out the book. In short, I like to think of To Die On Ice as a collective that produces things, rather than limiting it to four people playing a genre that doesn’t exist and that, for convenience, they called Lynch Core.
What would you say is the best aspect of “Panoramica Degli Abissi” and when will the album be released?
As far as I’m concerned, perhaps the most interesting aspect of ‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’ was facing the challenge of following a story both musically and lyrically. It seems to me that the result is a nocturnal and dreamlike album that allowed space for humble sonic citations of the Italian 1960s (I’m thinking of crooner Fred Bongusto) and wasn’t afraid to experiment with collaborations featuring female voices (Vespertina in L’INSONNIA and Francesca Bono in TEMPESTE DI SABBIA) and moments theoretically totally insane, like a kind of screamo gospel. Another interesting thing, on the record-label side, was managing to bring together two labels with no previous connection, from two countries at opposite ends: Italy (Subsound Records) and Norway (Gymnocal Industries).
What are your next plans after “Panoramica Degli Abissi’ drops and do you plan to tour?
As I mentioned, ‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’ is a multifaceted project, so we’ll try to give life also to its literary and video-artistic dimensions. As for the strictly musical and live aspects, yes, we are planning the dates that will follow the album’s release, scheduled for February 6, when, by pure coincidence, the Winter Olympics will begin in Italy. The most spectacular moment To Die On Ice.
About To Die On Ice & ‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’
To Die On Ice is a band with an artistic collective vocation, founded in 2021 and composed of former members of action dead mouse, ominoacidi, what contemporary means and oracle. Conceived as an open workshop that reflects on music and beyond, it brings together people with different musical styles in the name of “Lynch Core”, a genre defined by the author on the edge of sentimental pornography and at the crossroads between the sensual and unsettling imagery of the Black Lodge and Club Silencio, with an anti-technical, minimalist yet atmospheric noir jazz, blues and soul dilations, crooner voices that tear open and turn into screams.
‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’, is an album intended as an alternative narrative of a namesake story written by Filippo Dionisi, illustrated by comic book artist Vitt Moretta, and published in a bilingual book in Italian and English by Edizioni Fantasma. A novel set in a surreal post-New Year’s Eve, where the two protagonists, Paul and Bacall, happen to cross paths, along with their respective destinies and secret fears, on the parapets of an overpass, to find themselves in a race aboard a car that becomes a glowing submarine hurled toward the unknown. Each of the 13 tracks that compose the album is a sort of musical formulation of a moment in the story. The band does not consider the record as a soundtrack commenting on the story, but as the manipulation of the same material, the story, with a different medium, music.
The project also includes a video section: a visual album written by Filippo Dionisi and directed by Lulù Withheld, which expands on a minor detail from the story – an ice-skating performance glimpsed while channel-surfing – to produce an experiment in combinatory editing focused on the relationship between music and images. The visual album, available on VHS, was obtained by combining a more or less fixed and predetermined number of video fragments in as many different ways as there are tracks.
The sounds and atmospheres of the new album revisit and deepen those of the first record ‘Una Specie Di Ferita’ (2022), adding even more diverse ambiences —a cappella gospel-screamo moment featuring Vespertina, a dark duet with Francesca Bono of Bono-Burattini / Ofelia Dorme and a touch of Fred Bongusto doom-style – to the Lynch Core born with the first publication. Recorded and mixed by Enrico Baraldi and mastered by Claudio Adamo, ‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’ was performed live by Filippo Dionisi (guitar/vocals), Andrea Pedone (saxophone), Alessandro Vitali (drums), and Marco Senin (bass), who replaced Simone Ferri. In an ideal reference to the imagery of the visual, the vinyl will be released in a limited edition in ice blue with blood red center label, and in a standard black edition.
The first single from the album is ‘Baccanale’, due for release on 19 December 2025. The band describes it like this: “Entry into the vaporous fog rising from sweaty skin and a headlong dive into the animal hunger of base instincts, ‘Baccanale’ is a wave that breaks down into an orgy, amid distorted dilations and post-blues from the dark depths of a saxophonic ocean of bodily fluids. The third track of ‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’, it’s where Paul rescues Bacall at a party of wolves and crows. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
The second single from the album is ‘Un’estate’, due for release on 13 January 2026. The band describes it like this: “’Un’estate’ is the indictment of a season that doesn’t live up to its promises. The soul-tinged shades of bass and sax coil around the distorted tremolo of a guitar reaching for vertigo, with a ’60s-style crooning that puts a hood over Fred Bongusto only to unleash him into a doom dimension, where a sudden screamo outburst gives way to a rhythmic finale with disguised Motown inspiration. The ninth track of ‘Panoramica Degli Abissi’, it’s where Bacall lets Paul in. Whatever that may mean.”
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/todieonice
https://www.instagram.com/to.die.on.ice/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2O3luJCKANMPljhBbFbvIj
https://www.youtube.com/@todieonice3793
https://todieonice.bandcamp.com