5

The Ills of Modern Metal

Sometimes it's hard to fully encapsulate in a few words what something sounds like and you can sit for hours and liken things to being like 'a chipmunk in a tumble dryer' or 'a dog on a trampoline'. You then start to consider the fact that you might be quite wrong in the head to be able to conjure up these sounds and images. So you then start to worry how you can explain something without people calling the RSCPA/men in white coats to whisk you off.

For all this metalcore gubbins that is around at the moment 'Darth Vader playing ping pong after running a marathon' seems to be the best demonstrative explanation of the vocals of any metalcore band you can care to think of. It's also a pretty interesting visual. "Luke, I am your father...so let's run a marathon for paraplegic ex Stormtroopers and then have a game of Father/Son ping pong." (George Lucas, you can have that one for free if you ever want to do another Star Wars episode IV).

Despised Icon have nailed the breathless Darth Vader vocals to a tee. But as well as that, singer Alexandre Erian has included a good selection of animals within the vocals. Kids, it's time to guess the animal and precarious situation it's in. 'Furtive monologue'? A frog being caught between two rocks. 'The Ills of Modern man'? A startled bear in a frozen lake. These are just two instances of the strange nature of this album. Another is that the track titles are quasi- poetic with 'Tears of the Blameless' and 'Fainted Blue Ornaments' which sit at unease with the musical heaviness.

Fast, fast, fast: this is an album which moves at breakneck speed. It tears from the starting blocks, plods for a bit, hits the proverbial wall and ends on a final last ditch attempt to hit the finish line. But before it hits that finish line it falters and falls under a hail of rapid fire drums and just burns.

The trouble with this whole metalcore scene is that nearly every band sounds the same. You don't need 100 CDs of current metal bands when just one will do. This is fairly average as most metal bands go with that same huffy puffy Darth Vader vocals and doesn't do anything sensational musically or lyrically. In a musical climate which is saturated with average, samey sounding metal, this is a poor attempt with its only flourish that the singer can make a whole variety of animal sounds, which is quite a feat in itself.