BENIGHTED from France started around 1998 and they have released four albums of brutal and technical Death via Adipocere Records, with the last one Identisick having received very good reviews from the whole magazines or webzines around the world. The band changed its company, moving to Osmose Productions with Icon being their fifth record and the first one via their new record label. The other change is the new drummer behind, named Kevin, replacing Fred who was from the beginning.
I must confess that I have a more Euronymous preferences to my Death Metal and my relation with Death Core or similar musical areas are probably deficient. But in this situation BENIGHTED are not so horrible despite the fact that many of their ideas sounds bad, at least to my ears.
There are many nice riffs inside their songs, like Slut (with a pleasant guitar tapping idea and after it an excellent catchy riff). Grind Wit starts perfect with its AUTOPSY or ABCSESS character having also a good lead part, but its rap vocals destroys it. Forsaken - from the other side - despite its apathetic and technical start has a groove riff for refrain that is perfect for headbanging in their live gigs. Total power. The new drummer is an unstoppable reaping machine with good skills and clever playing, especially in Pledge Of Retaliation, that is one of the best moments in Icon. The self-titled track has a Swedish main riffing which is not bad, together with a slow bridge that is ear-raping. The last four songs cannot be compared with the previous ones, sounding boring and meaningless. Even some VOIVOD efforts in The Underneath cannot change the situation.
Their main influences can be described as something close to the present albums of NAPALM DEATH with more groove-ness or TERRORIZER's blast lunacy with some riffing coming from MORBID ANGEL and all of them mixed with some Hardcore references. Their instrument playing is in high level, together with a vocalist having different variations surely not niggard in his expression's dynamics. The whole psychotic technicity in some of their tracks can be the depiction of the lyrical concept that Icon is dealing with, the slow fall in psychosis of a man, with every song being something like flashbacks of his life. Generally speaking, Icon can easily reach the basic standards of its musical style scale but has no (except for some random moments) a capability of our interest's impulsion to higher levels.