Despite Exile-Scarlet Reverie

Self-Release
2011





I had the great hard rock band Vanadium on my mind when I sat down to listen to Despite Exile's 2011 EP over the weekend. Not that these two bands have anything in common other than being from Italy mind you. I was only thinking about how there have been quite a few excellent bands to come out of Italy. Do Despite Exile fall into the excellent category? Well, a few facts first before we get into that. The band was formed back in 2010 and unlike Vanadium (who every fan of early eighties metal should check out by the way) play a heavy (as in brutal baseball bat to the head heavy) form of deathcore with a small dose of metalcore thrown in as a last thought. I can only guess at to the band's exact influences. Maybe some early Death, Morbid Angel, Venom, Obituary and Deicide on the death metal side of things and stuff like the Cro-Mags, The Accused, Cryptic Slaughter, Terror, early Suicidal Tendencies and early C.O.C. on the hardcore side. Throw in a salt shakes worth of American metalcore and your there. Its almost like 60% death, 30% hardcore and 10% metalcore. Now seeing as these guys are only a year or so removed from their formation when this EP hit the scene I'd say the results are quite excellent. The band manages to be both technical in nature and drenched in brutality at the same time. With this being only a six song affair the beat down is over with though before the fun even begins. As it is an EP it clocks in at under 30 minutes so I'd like to see what happens when the band has a full-length to work with. Deathcore fans should like this one quite a bit.