In psychology, the term ‘Shadow Work’ is used to describe the process of exploring the unconscious reasons behind your feelings or behaviors, particularly uncomfortable emotions that seem out of character or beyond your control. Like, “Why do I hate my co-worker?”?.

Yay! I finally used my college degree.

So what is Despised Icon trying to unravel here? Why are they trying to dissociate from the Deathcore genre? A genre they arguably helped propagate, unintentionally or otherwise. Why don’t you lie down on the couch, mon amis, and let’s dig in?

Shadow Work is the iconic (pun fully intended) band’s third album after a brief hiatus from 2009 to 2016, the band’s last two efforts, 2016’s Beast and 2019’s Purgatory, both delivered what you’d expect from these influential canucks- a blistering mix of typically technical Canadian death metal/grindcore, hardcore rooted in breakdowns and squealing blasts.

But there is something different on Shadow Work; an underlying theme of going deeper, psychologically and mentally, and even of death and rebirth. Song titles like “Over My Dead Body”. “Death of an Artist”, (with the lines ‘This is the death of an artist, End of an ego, Out of the limelight, unspoken hero, I am reborn, Ruin and redemption, I am reborn, I am reborn’), and “Im Memoriam”. Despised Icon appears to be in somewhat of a transmorphic, cathartic,  but inward-looking state of mind.

But whatever it is, holy fuck do they still fucking ‘slap’, as the kids would say. And while still certainly inabashedly Despised Icon, musically there are some subtle shifts, as the band appears to be experimenting with slightly more black metal-ish structures. Listen to the 30-second mark of the opening title track (which has a surprisingly melodic lead solo as well), or “The Apparition” and “Death of an Artist”. Yeah, those are tremolo-picked riffs.

And listen, they are not leaning into the blackened symphonic deathcore trend at all (though noted deathcore metalcore keyboard maestro/influencer Misstiq does deliver some keyboards on “In Memoriam”), far from it, this is a more pure, sometimes melodic, 90s second wave style of riffs and even solos that litter the album.

But they still do what they do best with aplomb; fucking hefty grooves with reeeeeee filled dual vocals and shrill blasts and tracks like “Over My Dead Body” (feat. Matt Honeycutt of Kublai Khan TX), “Corpse Pose”,  and the albums beefiest cuts, “Reaper” (feat. Carnifex’s Scott Lewis and Chelsea Grin‘s Tom Barber)  and “Omen Of Misfortune” delivering classic, face punching, DI motifs and moments.

Other moments that caught my ear were the almost Swedish death metal gallop that surfaces in the otherwise Hatebreed-ish “Obsessive Compulsive Disaster”, the aforementioned synths in “In Memoriam”, the blackened punky grind burst of “ContreCoeur”, and the slow lope of “Fallen Ones”, which ends the album with some moody acoustics.

Ultimately, Shadow Work is arguably the best album of the band’s career – certainly the post-reunion ones. And shows a band as sharply-honed yet subtly developmental as I’ve heard recently.

[Visit the band's website]

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