Despised Icon - Consumed by Your Poison (2002)
JESUS ****ING CHRIST ON A CRUTCH!!! I'm a moderate Despised Icon fan, but I had never heard their debut until now. And **** me is that vocal performance absurd. I'm used to the death metal vocalist (they have two, one for death metal and the other for hardcore) sounding mostly intelligible, but here he sounds like Frank Mullen of Suffocation on
Effigy of the Forgotten: dense,
extremely guttural, and you might as well throw out the lyric sheet cause there's no way you'll be able to follow along.
I ****ing love the vocals on that album though, so I'd be all for this if not for the constant, constant, constant bree bree pig squealing. If you don't know what that is, it's basically when a vocalist makes his voice sound like drill. It's shrill, annoying, and since a singer doesn't seem to be able to form even the most basic of words while doing this there is literally no way to do anything but go "Breeeeeee breeeeeee breeeeeeeeee!!!". So not only is it ****, but it's monotonous ****. It does have a certain hilarious charm since it's such a ridiculous sound, but it still doesn't in any way make a song sound better -- bar adding a bit of variety -- and when integrated into a singer's style as much as it is on this album... god damn...
Other than that... moderate complaint, everything else here is pretty nice. The band aren't as accomplished here as they would be with later albums, but as much as I like those releases they're getting kind of stale. So, it's nice to hear a more unpolished Despised Icon channeling Dying Fetus, but even more thuggish and breakdown heavy. This **** has plenty of chugging, but this still rips with deathgrind as much as it slams with ignorant (though genuinely crushing) beatdowns. To any fan of more refined death metal I imagine they would say this lacked originality, versatility, or songwriting skill, but as a vehicle for inciting mosh pits this is ace as ****.
Pig squeals aside, this is probably one of the most satisfyingly raw deathcore albums I've heard and could please any number of death metal fans who don't need a band to be technical or classy in the least. Thank god I've kind of gotten used to that bree bree nonsense though.