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By RYAN MAVITY
I think I have found the musical equivalent of the “extreme guys” from the movie Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.
Montreal-based band Despised Icon certainly is extreme metal in more than just name. This music is chaotic and brutal. Shifting vocal styles, time signatures and mixing it up with death metal and a groove-oriented approach, they might be the most hardcore bunch of Quebecois since the Rougeau Brothers, or at the very least, Kataklysm.
This is not music to seduce your girlfriend to, unless she’s like the chick from Swimfan. Most metal singers either have a high-pitched scream or a growl of doom. Despised Icon’s singers, Alexandre Erian and Steve Marois, have both; at its deepest; the growl sounds sort of like an owl in a tree. It’s a tough band to classify because they shift styles so much; it’s not quite death metal, it’s not quite hardcore and it’s not really groove metal, although there are elements of all three. The only constant is that drummer Alexandre Pelletier is a busy man behind the kit, showing so much speed I worried he would pull a Mick Shrimpton and spontaneously combust. I don’t know if he’s as fast as the dude from The Berzerker is, but at least he’s in a better band.
I suppose I have yet to answer the real question: Is this record any good? Yeah, if you’re into extreme metal, you’ll really dig it. There’s enough moshpit material here to warrant having the EMTs on standby at Despised Icon’s shows. They will keep you headbanging, that’s for sure. They will not bore you. The band doesn’t so much engage a listener as take them by force with no Vaseline. It’s a full-on metal assault that doesn’t slow down until the surprising guitar melody on the final track, “Fainted Blue Ornaments.”
If you’re not a big fan of this style of music, it will require you to be in certain mood, like when it’s been a shitty day, you’re on a long drive, you need an alternative soundtrack for a “Madden” game or if you’re at home on a Sunday writing album reviews. It’s not always easy music to listen to, but it is fairly coherent and at least with these guys there’s a method to the mayhem.
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