Album Reviews : Dyscord – Tirades

Hailing from Perth, Dyscord serve up their sophmore full length “Tirades”. As their Myspace profile proudly boasts, Dyscord aren’t another cookie cutter “core” band. The five-piece deliver a sound that combines both the aggressiveness and almost hardcore edge of the American metal scene with the sheer brute force and guitar work of the ‘Gothenburg’ style.

After opening with the sound of a radio being tuned, the galloping “Behold” gets the album started in roaring fashion. Vocalist James Herbert’s vicious growls and bellows are hugely impressive, and never descend into any weak clean vocal passages. The crushing outro that closes the number adds some cleverly, jarring electronic glitches to the mammoth groove – which admittedly had this reviewer worrying if their Ipod was broken.

Despite its ridiculously long winded title, “You Sir, Are A Gentleman and A Scholar” is a meat and potato’s riff behemoth, boasting the hugely impressive six-string prowess of Matthew Herbert and Owen Thomas with chugs and shred aplenty.

While the songs don’t particularly differ from one to the next and the riffs aren’t the most hooky straightaway, after a couple of listens the songs truly start to show off their longevity. More novelty song titles continue, with the suspiciously Dethklok sounding “The Murderhorn” – however it’s only the song title sounds like Dethklok – the song itself is a dominatiing mix between later day Chimaira and Daath.

“Tirades” boasts a seriously world class production job, with every kick drum and tremolo-picked note pristinely bursting from the speakers. The only negative this reviewer could find is that it wouldn’t have hurt to mix the bass guitar slightly higher, with the wall of guitars overpowering the big strings throughout the album.

While hardly the most groundbreaking or diverse album ever released, “Tirades” is a very strong record from one of Australia’s rising stars in the metal world. Definitely a band to keep both eyes firmly on.

Band: Dyscord
Album: Tirades
Year: 2010
Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Origin: Perth, Australia
Label: Stomp
www.myspace.com/dyscord

Track listing:

1. Behold <- Reviewers Choice
2. You Sir Are A Gentleman And A Scholar <- Reviewers Choice
3. The Flaming Catharsis
4. Beneath The Callous
5. The Murderhorn <- Reviewers Choice
6. Saguntum
7. Divergence
8. Hard Times Make Virtuous People
9. The Apparatus