These days it’s increasingly hard to remind yourself just how Metalcore and the NWOAHM managed to kill off the bloated, red cap wearing joke that was Nu Metal - but for a year or two, when these bands started pouring out of the underground armed with an ultra-violent mix of Melodic Death/Thrash Metal and Hardcore Punk, they were a genuine breath of fresh air. However, since then, many of those bands have become parodies themselves and gone on to spawn a whole host of lacklustre copies. There are very few bands of that ilk that still manage to really excite me these days - Lamb of God, Chimera, and Devildriver are the only ones that instantly spring to mind.
But on to Icon in Me, and their brand of Melodic Death Metal mixed with Hardcore and Thrash - saviours? Or flogging a dead horse? Well saviours is a bit strong. But this is certainly a great album full of brutal riffs, throat shredding vocals, machinegun drumming, effective keyboard infusions, and the foresight to get a decent producer to add the spit and polish necessary to make it a contender in an oversaturated marketplace.
Nice electronic intro in to a skull splitting riff - always a good combination on an opening track in my book, and ‘Dislocated’ is one of the strongest openers I’ve heard in a while. It is followed by the frantic thrash of ‘That Day, That Sorrow’ with death roars and a sing-a-long chorus it is ticking the right boxes so far. There is plenty of Chimera and Lamb of God in ‘End of File’ to the point of near familiarity, but it is still a great fist-in-the-air track. ‘Empty Hands’ on the other hand has a very Mastodon style intro mixed with a near Machine Head like riff for some epic brutality. Track five ‘Moments’ does take me by surprise sounding a little too much like Killswitch Engage for my liking, which is a shame as it’s the only track so far that really grates against my ears. ‘Blood Ritual’ and ‘To the End’ sound like pretty standard fare as well and don’t really grab me as much as the first few tracks did. However the mellow instrumental ‘In Memoriam’ leading into the what has to be the best track on the album ‘The Worthless King’ makes me forgive them - an almost progressive approach here really pays off with a track that really grabs you by the back of the hair and gets your head banging. The final tracks continue this process somewhat - ‘Turn the Dead On’ has some great guitar shredding to its name, and ‘Avoiding the Pain’ has some excellent riffs and melodic elements… yet doesn’t have the impact needed for a closing track.
On the whole this is a great album that by all rights should cause a decent stir to raise the profile of the band in Europe. Whether that would carry them over into America is another matter. But this album is very solid for a debut, and it is clear that these guys know exactly what they want to do and have the talent to do it… and if they manage to break the states I have no doubt they’ll either stay the course or get rich instead.
http://www.iconinme.com
http://www.myspace.com/iconinme
