There’s something almost romantic about the idea that Despised Icon managed to survive both deathcore’s mid-2000s cultural extinction and the internet’s insatiable need to parody anything sincere. Every metal band eventually has to confront its own mythology. For some, that means pretending to evolve while secretly trying to re-record their best record from 2007. For others, it means staring straight into the black mirror of their own legacy and saying, “Fine. Let’s see what happens if we actually grow up.”
Shadow Work, their seventh full-length album, isn’t just another blast-beat sermon in the church of deathcore; it’s the sound of a band reckoning with the fact that brutality alone doesn’t keep you human—it just reminds you you’re still alive.
Despised Icon has always existed in that peculiar cultural Venn diagram where pit-violence meets precision. They were the first deathcore band that didn’t seem embarrassed to be deathcore, which is like being the first person at the gym to admit they actually like cardio. Over the years, their music has been an ongoing argument about how far aggression can go before it folds back into introspection. Shadow Work takes that argument into therapy—its resilience through relapse, healing through the language of annihilation.
These songs don’t just hit hard; they hit back. Produced by Alex Erian and Eric Jarrin, and mixed by Christian Donaldson (a man whose snare tone could probably start a small riot), the record sounds like a high-definition autopsy of human endurance. The guest list —Matthew Honeycutt, Scott Ian Lewis, and Tom Barber —reads like a deathcore Avengers lineup, but the true weapon here is self-awareness. Despised Icon isn’t trying to reinvent deathcore, they’re trying to understand why it ever made sense in the first place.
I was given the privilege of listening to the album early, and here are the three tracks that deem this album beyond vinyl worthy:
Track 1: “Shadow Work” – Absolutely vicious introduction. Forces you right back into the pit you left with zero question about who has the authority in this genre.
Track 2: “Over My Dead Body” – Ungodly level heaviness, undeniably virtuous production.
Track 9: “Obsessive Compulsive Disaster” – I feel like this is the core, and it mutates into the final tracks.
The whole album left me mentally numb to depth perception and description; which you can pre-order and experience the same way here.
Despised Icon’s new album, Shadow Work, is set to arrive on October 31, 2025, via Nuclear Blast. Order it here.
