BIO

Fact: The Icons = TOTAL ROCK ACTION! On their second release in 25 years, these Seattle Underground Rock Gods slap together an irreverent pile of noisy guitar songs filled with brain-sucking hooks in the tradition of the Pacific Northwest. As raw as The Clash, as stupid as the New York Dolls and as intellectually stimulating as Lou Reed on a really bad day, this ain’t for the faint of heart. Guest superstars include Jeff Kelly of the Green Pajamas, multi-instrumentalist indie-star Amy Denio and Glenn Slater from the Walkabouts.

With 16 full and complete songs, Appointment with Destiny! delivers the mighty rock and tuneful thrashing you should always expect from these four misguided post-moderns. Have mercy.

Their obscure classic Masters of Disaster was posthumously and minimally released on cassette in 1986 – it was finally time to give it a proper release.

Masters of Disaster features 14 tracks of 100% pure and manly rock – the original nine track album plus a recently discovered and finished version of “(Half the World is Made of) Women” as well as other obscurities. All tracks were remixed from the original 1983 master tapes.

The Icons are all grownups with jobs. They are doing this for the exact same reason as they did the first time; to make a beautiful racket and to believe for one sweet, delusional moment that music matters more than anything else. But with the release of Destiny!, they are finally on the verge of fame and fortune … Appointment with Destiny! is the Sgt. Pepper’s of the 21st Century. They are the walrus.

The Icons are: pretty boys Tom Dyer – Guitar, Vocals and Steve Trettevik – Guitar, Vocals – plus Hades’ own rhythm section, James Gascoigne on drums and Rick Yust on bass and vocals

REVIEWS

Jun 15, 2011

press quote

“Their slam/bang guitar and pounding rhythms wake me up to why I loved The Wailers and The Sonics back in the day”

“Their slam/bang guitar and pounding rhythms wake me up to why I loved The Wailers and The Sonics back in the day and why bands I never would have listened to in the Sixties (Iggy Pop, Dead Boys, Richard Hell & the Voidoids) later became solid favorites.” Rock and Reprise Review: The Icons “Appointment with Destiny” http://www.rockandreprise.net/iconsdestiny.html

REVIEW THIS IS BOOK”S MUSIC

REVIEW: The Icons’ “Appointment With Destiny!”

Posted on June 19, 2011 by John Book

The Icons are a project from Seattle featuring Tom Dyer, James Gascoigne, Rick Yust, and Steve Trettevik recording the kind of ruthless pop/punk that sounds good now as it originally did in the 1980’s.Appointment With Destiny! (Green Monkey) will be celebrated by Seattleites who remember when the Seattle music scene sounded like this. These guys may be older than the first time they were around, but it and they still sound really good. While some of Seattle bands from the era sounded different from one another, you can listen to Mudhoney, Green River, The U-Men, The Fastbacks, and then this album and realize that they were all striving for something. Maybe back then they weren’t about claiming “authenticity”, but it feels and sounds real, that kind of gutsy aggressive rock that is immediate but also something that’s worthy for tomorrow. A track like “Dancin’ In The Jailhouse” may remind people of other bands like X or The Fleshtones, bands who weren’t afraid of distortion or feedback and if it was there, they’d make more music around and within it.

REVIEW: The Icons’ “Masters Of Disaster”

Posted on July 26, 2010 by John Book

The Icons were a Seattle band most people outside of the Pacific Northwest have not heard of. but you may have heard of them if you were a part of the music scene in the early/mid-80’s. Keyword is *may* because they were obscure, but they did make an impact on those who attended their shows.

Masters Of Disaster (Green Monkey) is an album that represents the Seattle sound circa 1985, and I don’t mean a body of water either. Their sound was a mixture of new wave with a hint of gothic overtones, punk but not overly punk, but with an attitude and hint of sarcasm that has become one of the region’s greatest trademarks. The music may have sounded rough but lyrics to songs like “I Call Your Name”, “Work Ethic Rock”, and “Give Me All Your Love” show a sense of caring that could’ve made The Icons into a decent pop band, if they collectively wanted to go down that route. They did not, but it is an interesting flashback to a scene who were willing to try out anything and everything without a bankable template to work off of, especially at a time when templates were what other music communities spoke of.

REVIEW THE BIG TAKEOVER

The Icons – Masters of Disaster (Green Monkey)

4 November 2010

by Michael Toland

One of the advantages to owning a label is the opportunity to release your own projects. While the Green Pajamas may be the flagship band for Green Monkey Records, the Icons, label owner Tom Dyers‘ group, could have easily laid claim to the title if the band had released Masters of Disaster in the mid-80s when it was recorded. Dyers and co-frontman Steve Trettevik pen tight, funny rockers like “Beach Party,” “We’re So Bad” and “(Half the World is Made of) Women,” letting hooks and raised-eyebrow lyrics tell the story. Following cut after cut of urgent, melodic postpunk, Dyer ends the record with the delightful “I Call Your Name,” a winsome pop tune co-produced by the Green PJs’ Jeff Kelly. Left unfinished until the last couple of years, the tracks sound perfectly fine, even contemporary – there are lots of young musicians trying to capture this kind of guitar-driven spike-pop sound and not doing it nearly as well. With Dyer reactivating the Icons, at least as a recording unit, now is the time to give these Masters of Disaster their long overdue props.

Aug 15, 2003