As many of you know, I grew up musically with metal music. I experienced the very fast development of this scene from normal metal, speed-metal, thrash-metal, death-metal and finally black metal and it has influenced me. However, it was only a matter of time until this very fast development eventually came to a standstill and an increase or radicalization was no longer possible. Getting faster and harder went well for a while, but at some point reached its peak once and was completed for my taste.
That was the first time I heard the song "Mohawk" from "Leæther Strip", which changed my musical world and broke with my previous musical ideas. For the first time, I heard grim, noncommercial music that was not produced by the classical band setting, but by a single person with a synthesizer. I heard no roars but megaphone-like distorted voices. While I in the past used to associate synths with cheap pop music, I suddenly heard that it was really creating somber, noncommercial moods. It was only a matter of time before I wanted to do that myself as my own music.
The song "Mohawk" has always been slower than an average Leæther Strip song, and Leæther Strip has also changed a lot during the decades, just as I never intended to copy Leæther Strip. For this reason, many may not see any great similarities between Ice Ages and Laeatherstrip. But that does not change the fact that Ice Ages probably would not exist without the music of Laeatherstrip.