Review Summary: While not completely original, Ion Dissonance provide a substantially chaotic album.
The sound that Ion Dissonance creates has never been a wholly original one. The entire tech death scene was decidedly popular amongst the unwashed masses even before Solace’s 2005 release. Since then, the genre has exploded, and following in suite with most metal subgenres that burst suddenly into the limelight, technical death metal has undergone a wholesale saturation of incredibly lame bands. Bands like fellow Canadians, Beneath the Massacre are in fact very heavy, and certainly have the chops to rival the best out there, but it’s the compulsive and overbearing wankery that evokes nothing from the listener, besides perhaps a statement like, “These guys sure can shred!” as they roll their eyes and look for the skip button. It is of this concern, that I believe Ion Dissonance is (was) set apart from the tech death herd.
The entire album has such a grating, schizophrenic sound to it. It truly sounds like the music coming through the speakers is genuinely pissed off and means to cause indiscriminate harm to anything in its path. This effect is truly a summation of the parts that went into the creation of this music. First we must talk of the guitars, they are played with the seemingly requisite use of palm muted chugging interspersed with fast technical runs. Now, that previous sentence could very well be a description of any half-assed band in the genre, but it’s what Antoine Lassier and Sebastion Chaput actually do within those technical runs that develops the manic sound. Pick slides whilst fretting and liberal use of the whammy bar help to create riffs like the central theme in “Cleansed by Silence” that dives down into a low chug and then scrapes around like malfunctioning gears for a bit, only to spasm back into that same diving chug but this time in half time with a tense, yet soaring melody over it. It’s eerie stuff that I’d say has a tone relative to Gorguts’ masterpiece, Obscura, both in actual sound, and in its unsettling feel. The drums are just as chaotic, never sticking to a single beat, let alone time signature for more than just a measure or two. The bass is of course, barely audible, especially on initial listens. A little familiarity however, reveals complex Meshuggah-esque bass lines that truly help to pulverize the listeners mind into a catatonic state.
Hands down, the component of this machine that provides the most merciless destruction of your ear drums, are the vocals and lyrics of Gabriel McCaughry. This is some truly demented stuff spewing from his lungs. Stylistically, he opts mostly for a hardcore bark which on its own is very effective, but he also shrieks, yells, and just plain screams at the top of his lungs at you with the utmost rage and conviction, that in parts such as just before the final breakdown on “She’s Strychnine,” or the beginning of “Lecturing Raskolnikov,” you really cannot help but be taken aback by the madness of it all. It really helps that the lyrics on this album rank among Pig Destroyer’s as some of the most disturbingly poetic lyrics I’ve heard. Lines like, “Yeah I heard the rumors too, the ones stipulating that I’ve lost my reason on the account of lust, Im afraid I’ll have to confirm that to the proper authorities soon.” reek of the cold, content smugness of a mentally unsound murderer.
Solace isn’t perfect though. To some ears, this collection of songs will sound very samey, as they all dabble in similar, off-the-wall-technical madness for some length of time, before entering into one of numerous breakdowns. I usually hate breakdowns due to how trite and cliché they have become, but this band knows how to smash you with heaviness, and keep your mind engaged at the same time. Just listen to about a minute into “O.A.S.D.” that is some evil stuff right there (I saw the bass player smash his foot straight through the stage during this breakdown, live). Regardless, some are undoubtedly going to be off put by the sheer number of breakdowns, as well as the sheer grating quality of the riffs interspersed between. I won’t lie, some more melody, or variation would have been nice here and there, but that’s not what Ion Dissonance is about. Disgruntled, pissing insanity is the name of the game on Solace, and it’s a particular flavor of the whole “deathcore” genre that is considerably more palatable than most of the swill some bands (sadly, Ion Dissonance’s current lineup included,) are feeding us these days.
