Список групп Deathcore Despised Icon Consumed by Your Poison

Despised Icon is the best Canadian deathcore band, period. When they broke up, I almost cried. Then I remembered how disappointed I was with Day of Mourning and I toughened up. But when I took my first listen of Consumed by Your Poison, I was shocked and blown away! Definitely the most different album I've heard in a long while.

Let me talk about the overall sound and lyrics of the album. It's nothing like any typical deathcore album. I'll start with the obvious, a female vocalist. A lot of people see being female as a handicap in extreme metal. F**k that! Marie has got to be one of the most talented vocalists I ever heard! He highs are sick, her lows are brutal. All Steve does is bree. She really carried the band's vocals throughout and the albums sound is technical death metal mixed with the speed and intensity of grindcore. Mix in lyrics about cutting off your penis, media perceptions of beauty, death, etc. It defies any genre I can think of.

The guitars are technical, fast and brutal. You rarely find that these days. It's a real treat to hear guitars with both technicality and a strong, heavy groove and fast tempo. What is also a treat is that there's a bassist who can actually contribute at times! I'm not asking for bass solos, but I love when bass is actually audible at times and actually contributes instead of just mimicking the guitars. Just let me know that there's actually a bassist at times and I'll be fine. You can definitely hear the bassist's existence in this CD.

Let me go more in depth on the vocals. As in all DI albums, there are two vocalists. Usually it's Steve Marois and Alex Erian. Even some DI fans don't recall that Alex used to be on drums. Marie-Hélène Landry and Steve was the original vocalist pair and, in my opinion, a better pair then Steve and Alex. Marie has better range then most well known vocalists in extreme metal. She can do highs, lows and midrange to match with the sound of the tracks, which is a treat that you rarely see with the one-scream-fits-all deathcore scene you find now. And Steve has the best pig squeals in the genre. At least he HAD the best squeals. I don't know if he forgot how to do it or just grew incapible of doing it over time. All I know that the mix of Marie's amazing range and Steves amazing squeals works perfectly, which even I didn't expect to work as well as it did.

Don't forget that Alex didn't do a bad job at drums. He's no Alex "Grind" Pelletier, but he surely tried his best to keep up with the speed and technicality of the rest of the music. His drumming definitely seemed like the weak point in the album, but you can't fault the band because they straightened it out before the next album. I give Alex Erian an A for effort.

In all, I think it deserves a 18/20. My personal favorite song on the album is Fashionable. I wish there were more deathcore albums like it. The genre's getting stale and albums like this keep it interesting.