HUGS FOR THUGS: DESPISED ICON ARE CONGENIAL AND BRUTAL IN EQUAL MEASURES

In the immortal words of Roger Murtaugh: “I’m gettin’ too old for this shit.” Walking into the Bowery Poetry Club this past Friday night for Despised Icon’s set as part of the Heavy Hitters CMJ showcase, I felt like an old man, out of touch with current fashions: I didn’t have a backpack, I didn’t have a sideways-turned baseball cap, and I was wearing a Motley friggin’ Crue shirt, for fuck’s sake. I was pretty sure that all the karate moshin’ hardcore brats that populated the show were gonna eat me alive, that I’d never make it back to my computer to file this review.

I needn’t have worried: while Vince and I have missed those spunky British metal kids we encountered at Download a couple of years back – y’know, the ones that get in the pit only to stop and hug one another after every song, as if to say “Jolly good mosh!” – it turns out that they do exist here in the States, and that they love Despised Icon. How else to explain the incredibly polite atmosphere of an otherwise completely Brutal with a capital “B” show?

People saying “excuse me” and “sorry” when they bump into you? No one pushing and shoving, but actually walking around in a semi-orderly fashion? Was this a metal show, or one of my mother’s Sunday afternoon tea parties?

Of course, once Despised Icon hit the stage, all hell broke loose, and the moshpit that exploded near the front of the stage overcame about 80% of the small venue. The band’s energy certainly warranted such a reaction: having driven ten hours to play a one-off gig that would last less than one tenth that time, you’d have expected these guys to be exhausted, but no – they were there to lay the crowd to waste, and lay the crowd to waste they did.

Co-frontmen Alex Erian and Steve Marois screamed their fucking guts out, to the point where when they spoke in between songs – without French Canadian accents, much to my disappointment – their voices were noticeably hoarse, reinforcing the notion that these dudes are 100% for real in a big, big way. These guys may dress like hip hoppers, but their vox put Glen Benton to shame, dude: that so-low-it-sounds-like-the-bloodiest-most-painful-diarrhea-you’ve-ever-had style of singing so readily on display on the band’s latest album, The Ills of Modern Man, is no studio effect the way I’d assumed it was: these guys actually sound like that. It’s fuckin’ incredible, and I have to imagine it will leave both guys mute at some point in the future. At least they’ll go down in a blaze of glory.

As for the band, they sounded virgin tight, and they rained their brand of elasticized deathcore down on the crowd like thick slimey drops of acid rain. Bassist Sebastien Piche windmilled ’til it looked like his head just might fly off, and the rest of the band… well, honestly, I couldn’t see the rest of the band through the tornado of destruction that was the massive pit. But like I said, they certainly sounded bad assed.

And yeah yeah yeah, at the end my back hurt and I was sweaty and tired and ready to just collapse, smoke a joint and listen to some soothing Agalloch or something. Enjoy your fleeting youth, all you Hot Topicers out there. In just a few short years you’ll be too pooped to mosh, and kids will look at your One Dead Three Wounded shirts with a raised eyebrow.

-AR

For a complete list of upcoming Despised Icon tour dates, check out their MySpace page. They’re finishing out the year around North America before hitting Europe with Misery Index in January.