Despised Icon - Day of Mourning (2009)

Country: Canada

Language: English, French (Le Français)

Genre: Deathcore

Label Number: 8578-2

.FLAC via Florenfile

.AAC 256 kbps via Florenfile

© 2009 Century Media

AllMusic Review by Phil Freeman

Despised Icon have ties to the Quebec technical death metal scene, though they're not truly part of it. Their music has some intricate parts, but it's primarily a display of muscle-headed deathcore brutality. It was produced by the band's former guitarist, Yannick St-Amand, though, and he's worked with acts like Ion Dissonance, Neuraxis, and Beneath the Massacre, so he knows how to get that ultra-clean tech-death sound, which Day of Mourning has in spades. Drummer Alex Pelletier sounds like a machine, whipping through ultra-complex fills and brutal, endurance-testing blastbeats with equal energy, and St-Amand gives him a full, reverby sound rather than the typewriter/practice-pad clicking still too common in extreme metal. Pelletier, in fact, is the primary reason to listen to this album, as the riffs -- even when they shift briefly, tantalizingly, into dissonance -- are mostly of an extremely knuckle-headed-friendly sort, downtuned and grinding like a bulldozer trying to work its way out of a golf course sand trap. Some songs, like "Eulogy," feature decent soloing, but for the most part, the guitars are there to provide a foundation for the two lead vocalists to shout and scream over. They come across like a Run-D.M.C.-style partnership, one going low and the other somewhat higher, with the entire band joining in for gang shouts at times. Within the extremely limited context of deathcore, this is a pretty good album, but "thick-necked dudes riffing and bellowing" is a genre that's offering limited rewards in 2009, so Day of Mourning is best appreciated as a showcase for Alex Pelletier; it would be nice if he could find a side band more worthy of his talents.

tags: despised icon, day of mourning, 2009, flac,