Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Ion Dissonance
Label: Century Media
Release: 2010
Length: 42:18
Rating: 4.8/5
Want to defy the crowds and treat your neighbors to a pounding and a near-heart-attack, served straight from your own speakers? Nothing easier! Dissonance is the commandment, and the steel-clad imperative to wreck everyone unprepared is what has defined the Canadian brutality technicians in Ion Dissonance since their very first record!
From Breathing Is Irrelevant through Solace and Minus The Herd, the intensity has only kept climbing, and Cursed proves that the peak of technicality and total ear punishment hasn’t been reached yet. There was obviously still room to level up, and only a rare few bands can pull that off. Schizophrenic sounds and mathematical rhythms fuse into one perfect sonic wall, and beyond it lie cataclysm and a giddy love of suffering. The album offers more than just deathcore with an average dose of grind. Once again the quintet doesn’t hide in the safe shelter of the tried and true, and keeps reaching for one more step in its sonic evolution, while the garage-band ethic of giving everything live keeps the geysers of inspiration from drying up. They recall the brilliance of Dillinger Escape Plane or the recently heard Cephalic Carnage, but despite all the comparisons, their face is only and entirely their own. The production is handled by none other than guitarist Antoine Lussier, and woven into the beefy, savory stew are personal trials, inner conflict, and a clear desire to break the last remaining commandment of the heavy metal genre. Riffs and screaming moments of genius are in no short supply, and the combination of merciless rhythm changes and truly extreme weight of the musical layers is, to put it mildly, murderous and deadly. Listening, surrendering to the content, and enduring the relentless sonic Calvary will wring you out completely. And yet the musicianship, the substance, and the outstanding production are what pour manna of pleasure and comfort onto your battered soul. The effort pays off. Cursed remains an outstanding punishment and a curse for superficial listeners.
Metallic hardcore would be one rough approximation, wrapping up raging and rhythmic stalling on the spot, the madness of beefed-up guitar tones, Quebecois rebellion against the system, intelligence, and outstanding passion. Noise has form, and that form is rough, technically packed, and stunning. The opening verses of chaos kick off with the title track ‘Cursed’, and the 8-string guitars conjure up a good chunk of the magic that made them so remarkable (and rightly noticed) back in early 2002. The recipe is simple and punchy: take the best the math-metal world of the likes of Meshuggah has to offer, tune the sound down even further, and weave rhythm, a feel for noise, and innovation into the low-frequency thunder. The high-voltage shock to the system carries on despite the lineup change in this machine of total destruction. After the departure of the oft-criticized singer Gabriel McCaughry, all the persuading falls on the shoulders of the charismatic muscleman Kevin McCaughey, and the fresh bassist Yannick Desgroseillers pours plenty more oil on the creative fire. Names are irrelevant anyway. There are no choruses, and no comfort that it’ll ever get easier. The perpetuum mobile of instinctive spasm only lets up now and then, serving you cramps and spurts of pure pleasure straight from an open carotid artery.
Ion Dissonance have once again leapt over the line of generic standards and remain the last, or at least one of the few, survivors on the battlefields of the final reckoning with the demons of cruel everyday life. Cursed is a masterpiece that only a rare chosen few can appreciate, and that’s how it should be. For everyone else, the warning is clear: in the explicitness of their noise, Ion Dissonance will always be consistent and unyielding. Hail and kill! Thank the gods for sonic catharsis! Impaled and bleeding, we crave more!
This review was written in collaboration between Rock Hard Slovenija and RockLine.
Lineup
Kevin McCaughey – vocals
Antoine Lussier – guitar
Sebastien Chaput – guitar
Yannick Desgroseillers – bass
Jean-François ‘JF’ Richard − drums
Production
Antoine Lussier
Tracklist
1. Cursed
2. You People Are Messed Up
3. The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
4. The Is The Last Time I’ll Repeat Myself
5. No Care Ever
6. After Everything That’s Happened, What Did You Expect
7. We Like To Call This One – Fuck Off
8. Can Someone Please Explain This To Me
9. Disaster In Sight
10. This Is Considered Mere Formality
11. This Feels Like The End
12. They’ll Never Know
13. Pallor
