Minus the Herd

 They were even here in Slovenia recently. To be exact: you could catch them in Laško, and I doubt any of it made sense to you. The label pitches them very convincingly, something like this: picture the worst disaster imaginable, a train derailment, and you’re the only survivor. Mute, disoriented, lost in the chaotic wreckage of twisted sheet metal, blood and scorched flesh. And the only thing that can yank you out of chaos’s steel grip and back to reality is a hundred voices screaming and rasping in unison. Honestly, there’s no element of surprise left in what comes next: this quintet of extreme deathcore maniacs, who weave elements of mathcore and metalcore into their brutal racket, hails from the far north of the North American continent, from Montreal, Canada. The shock had already been softened by fellow countrymen like Strapping Young Lad, Despised Icon and we could go on, but this is without a doubt a band of very gifted and precise musicians who have been stirring up trouble since their first releases back in 2003. The name says a lot: for this crew of fanatics, musical extremists and audioterrorists, the name is Ion Dissonance. After the albums Breathing Is Irrelevant (2003) and Solace (2005), it’s time for total nihilism and destruction. Time for an auditory massacre to the tenth power, one that thins out the herd of superfluous, unbelieving sheep. Time for Minus The Herd.

The problem with most bands and albums filed under metalcore and math – core with a dash of death metal is that they’re either too clichéd and melodic in the same old key, or practically unlistenable, scattered and forcedly “artsy”. The recipe Ion Dissonance went for, after two more precise and technically brilliant but slightly less convincing albums, was simple: they found a new microphone guru to freshen up the sulfurous breath of the fire-spewing beast. Kevin McCaughey has rough, extremely heavy-sounding guttural vocals. As if he had an extra pair of vocal cords in his throat that he has no intention of keeping safe. He gets the grueling job done with flying colors, and the cohesion of this napalm bath is seasoned just right for fans of Meshuggah, Converge, A Life Once Lost or, say, Dillinger Escape Plan. Need anything more to give yourself over to the flow of that stagnant rhythm and inject a fresh dose of propene into your veins?

The main weapon in this showdown is a precise dose of high-voltage shock for your entire organism. The devastating combination consists of vertiginous drum acrobatics, dissonant guitar riffs, very raspy and violent vocals, flowing rhythms, angular and jagged song structures. Absolutely not for those delicate souls who need their instant dose of mellifluous pop vocals and a hypocritically empty basket of stereotypical blather that nobody believes in anymore, not even the bands, yet it still sells like hot cakes … The album seasons you from the first riff on. The song ‘The Surge’ kicks off unannounced and keeps building, like a hurricane. Kevin’s vocals blend nicely into a compact mass of mathy chaos, ramped up by guitarists Sebastian Chaput and Tony Lussier, while the sheen of less noticeable but no less important elements of low-end coloring comes courtesy of bassist Xavier St. Laurent and a manic drumming machine going by the name of Jean-Francois Richard. The perpetuum mobile of instinctive spasm settles down a bit after the first thunder and puts you in a state of listening receptiveness. Almost pleasure. If you’re at least a little bit masochistic and sick of rhythmic order and discipline. Ion Dissonance keep shifting you from gear to gear, smearing pure forms and fraying smooth edges. On purpose. So that Minus The Herd sounds like an ominous serenade of apocalypse and doom. ‘The Evidence’ doesn’t soften the feeling of total sonic debauchery, though it has to be admitted that there are few comfy elements or anchor points that would make finding your way through the composition a little easier and clearer. No choruses, the verses are a string of motifs that lurch chaotically from one extreme to the other. ‘Kneel’ shows with its title the intent with which Ion Dissonance want to put us on the floor from the very first riff, beat us with granite paving stones and leave us to bleed to death. The record falls into the only schematic framework available to you. A cacophony of brutality and rhythm that you can hardly thrash around to coherently while venting your inner rage. Really, Ion Dissonance are masters at leading you from the shallows of a drained-out mood deeper and deeper – into the abysses of schizophrenia and mental exhaustion. Much like ‘Shunned Redeemer’, where they parasitize you until you’re completely wiped out, comes another understatement – ‘You Shouldn’t Be Alive’. There’s no shelter where you’d be safe. No shelter where you could breathe with full lungs. No comfort. “You shouldn’t be alive!” That’s the only chorus on the record. An obituary of magmatic spurts from the cracked face of a planet of darkness and madness, an awakening into a new nightmare, is the song ‘Scorn Haven’. The negative discourse is stuffed hardcore-style. The guitars cross over polyrhythmic territory and turn into a plowing tool, driving the spikes deeper and deeper into the brain cortex. ‘Of Me… Nobody’s Safe’. The transcendent element is that there’s too much of everything. Rhythm. Rushing. Brutality. And it’s precisely in this world of dissonance, with an unsynchronized heartbeat that tears the shackles of life and turns the whole into a mechanical mass, that the beast of the Montreal quintet feeds. ‘Untitled’ with its sampled humming and stagnant drumming recalls static interference. You can hear a melody. You can hear fragments of beauty and softening. Distant memories of life. The tolling of hell’s bells. And then it’s back to the state of chaos. ‘Void Of Conscience’ leads toward the jaws of the final showdown. The coup de grâce for the impatient, after a marathon of a little over half an hour, is ‘Tarnished Trepidation’. The faint-heartedness has turned murky. Fears are driven off. A five-minute post festum. The showdown is over. They straighten out the sheet metal and reward you with a symphony of sonic catharsis. The stains of destruction are wiped away. The corpses are cleared. And on your lips you can read only one of two things: either satisfaction that it’s all over, or an unstoppable desire for more.

It has to be admitted that after Hatebreed, Shadow’s Fall and the like, we’ve got one of the most massive records ever produced by the legendary producer Zeuss. Minus The Herd sounds technically flawless, brutal and heavy. Like an avalanche of granite finally collapsing on your soul in half an hour flat. Without a doubt a new discovery for all fans of extreme metal, and one they absolutely must not miss. Bands like Emmure or, say, according to the press, The Acacia Strain used to claim they’d outdone everything previously recognized as the heaviest, most brutal and most extreme. Unlike these self-proclaimed Guinness record holders, Ion Dissonance have undoubtedly hit that target, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find an album in your collection that could, in sheer uncompromising fury and hunger for punishing unbelievers, so gallantly and easily outdo Minus The Herd. The herds of unbelievers have been successfully thinned this time. Anyone dare object?