After six years of silence, Montreal deathcore trailblazers Despised Icon are formally again. The band has introduced their seventh full-length album, Shadow Work, set for launch on October 31, 2025, by way of Nuclear Blast Information. The brand new document marks a significant milestone for the band, not solely as their first new materials since 2019’s Purgatory, however as a deep, introspective work rooted in each private transformation and the band’s unshakable legacy in excessive music.
Shaped in 2002, Despised Icon had been among the many first to carve out and refine the deathcore blueprint—a unstable mixture of loss of life steel depth and hardcore power. Over twenty years later, the band’s core lineup stays largely intact, and with Shadow Work, they show there’s nonetheless loads of gasoline left within the fireplace. The album is described as their most targeted and dynamic providing but, combining high-velocity brutality with eerie melody, groove-heavy breakdowns, and the emotional weight of hard-earned perspective.
Lyrically, Shadow Work delves into the psychological technique of going through and integrating one’s darker self — the “shadow,” as coined by Carl Jung. The band explores themes of resilience, trauma, and interior therapeutic, tying deeply private experiences to the chaotic instances we stay in. The result’s an album that hits exhausting not simply bodily, however emotionally.
Produced in-house by Alex Erian and Eric Jarrin, the album’s sonic weight is sharpened by the expert palms of Christian Donaldson (Cryptopsy, Shadow of Intent, Indicators of the Swarm), who dealt with mixing and mastering duties. The highly effective and haunting cowl art work comes from famend steel artist Eliran Kantor, whose previous work contains visuals for Hatebreed, Thy Artwork Is Homicide, and Cavalera.
Shadow Work additionally brings some severe vocal firepower, that includes visitor appearances from Matt Honeycutt of Kublai Khan TX, Scott Ian Lewis of Carnifex, and Tom Barber of Chelsea Grin and Darko US. With these voices becoming a member of the fray, the document guarantees a various and punishing vocal onslaught.
The band is at the moment placing the ending touches on their first music video from the album and teased that new music is on the best way quickly.
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