Before we begin, you have to understand that I dislike DESPISED ICON and have for a while. I’d always heard about them simply because they are from my neck of the woods, and they were hyped as being brutally heavy, a real kick in the teeth, etc etc . I’ve seen them live a couple of times, plus heard their last couple of albums, and, well, I’ve thought that were okay at best. They succeeded in being extremely heavy, but there is a small little thing called songwriting that the band can’t get right, and thus the music they write is extremely trite and repetitive. So yea, there is a slight bias here.

Okay, I’m not being completely fair to DESPISED ICON. Yes, they play a sub-genre of Metal that annoys me to no end, but they are much more interesting than your typical run of the mill Deathcore band. It’s not saying much, though.

All of the staples are here. The shouted vocals, the atonal riffs, the well played breakdowns, some simple chugging power chord riffs, gang vocals (sounds like a violent group is shouting the vocals in unison). It’s all here, and it all has that Hardcore meets Death Metal sound that Deathcore is based around. I don’t have to describe any further, there is nothing groundbreaking about the music nor the vocals.

There are some parts of some songs that tend to get more interesting because the band opts to try something different. There are some very melodic riffs that pop up unexpectedly (intro of “Day Of Mourning”), and there are some riffs that are pretty much pure Death Metal, the tremolo picked fast intro of “MVP”. There are also some clean sections in “Sleepless”, and there are some good interesting riffs that are present amidst the boring chugga-chugga stuff.

I have to commend the band for expanding and going beyond their genres limitations by adding different elements to their music, but the core of their sound is still Deathcore, and frankly….I hate Deathcore.

I don’t like this, but as I said before, I have a big bias against it. You could still check this out.

(Online January 24, 2010)