The Ills of Modern Man

A few years ago I used to be huge into deathcore and metalcore and just finding the most "Br00tal" and "greasy" as we liked to call it breakdowns and just listen to music full of that kind of stuff. In the past couple years I have "progressed" to mostly black metal and also ambient and folk music and even quite a bit of Indie rock. Haha how contradictory isn’t it? Regardless, even to this day this album would have to be my favourite deathcore album and that I can listen to without getting annoyed by the poor musicianship and constant breakdowns.

The thing that is awesome about Despised is the fact that they use two vocalists. Alexandre Erian utilizes "hardcore" shouts which are more adapted to a deathcore type of music, so they sound awesome. The second vocalist Steve Marois uses excellent, really painful sounding highs, and deep lows, and on this album even the notoriously hated "pig squeal." To be honest I do not mind them, they are tolerable because they do not sound overly stupid. The vocalists take turns performing and they do a very solid job of expressing their lyrics and the feeling of the music throughout the songs.

The guitar work is quick, rapid, fast, tres vite, whatever you would like to call it, not very technical, but this album has many, many awesome riffs that could somewhat fit into the death metal category on some songs. The use of breakdowns is relatively frequent but none are the same sounding and not all are just done to create the most "greasy, crunchy" sound, they are created to sound different than the stereotypical breakdown, so Despised gets my props for that. Overall the breakdowns are pretty memorable, at least a few of them are such as the ones in "In the Arms of Perdition" the one at the end (which I am currently listening to, haha it still excites me) is really, really awesome, with long pig squeal and then the bass drop, its really br00tal. A couple other notable ones are the ones in "Furtive Monologue, Nameless (which has some awesome pulling on the guitar strings to create a really dissonant effect) and the "Sheltered Reminiscence" one is different and awesome.

On to the drumming. Well Alex "Grind" Pelletier, is in my opinion one of the best drummers in the game right now, like Jesus, his speed and consistency is ridiculous, in the song "The Ills of Modern Man" the things he does with the drum kit are incredible. Look up the video of them playing the song live from their "Montreal Assault" DVD where its just him playing the drums, it blows your mind.

The bass is relatively quiet, it generally follows the guitars but adds a great deepness and heaviness to the overall atmosphere of the songs.

The music is actually generally quite dark in nature, not just gory or what not that is typical for deathcore, but the lyrics are far more intelligent which I really do admire.

Of special note is the last song "Fainted Blue Ornaments." This song is just amazing, the final breakdown of the album which has just repeated words shouted over and over again, and into this actually beautiful (yes I used the word beautiful to describe a deathcore song) outro with very mournful sounding guitar tapping, that create a sense of longing, and then finally explode into an incredible tremolo riff that leads out the song with the other guitarist squealing away on the strings and the two vocalists shouting back and forth, and ending with Steve Marois doing some final very heart wrenching high shrieks where the last one lasts about 20 seconds as the song fades out and ends the album.

This album is certainly a classic in the deathcore genre and Despised Icon's shining moment hands down. This album is still a favourite in my books even though I have expanded into other genres of music. I still give it a good spin to feel like I am back in High school with my buddies listening the most "greasy" breakdowns and br00tal music. Good job Despised Icon, TABARNAK