Despised Icon’s return home for a second sold-out night on December 7 felt less like a standard album launch and more like a gathering of people who’ve aged alongside this music. Presented by Extensive Enterprise and Heavy MTL, the bill paired local heavyweights with longtime collaborators and newer bruisers, creating a night built on continuity rather than nostalgia.
This was the second of two sold-out shows over the weekend, and that detail mattered. Sunday crowds arrive looser and more reckless, and Club Soda had the low hum of a room that knew precisely what it was there for. I first saw Despised Icon in the UK in 2007, on a bill with Beneath The Massacre. Nearly two decades later, seeing those names reunited on a Montreal stage felt strangely inevitable.
Primal Horde opened with the thankless task of warming up a room already vibrating with anticipation. They kept things tight and direct. No overlong intros, no wasted gestures. Their set moved fast, built on blunt-force riffs and urgency suited to an early slot. People were still filing in, but heads were already moving, and the pit didn’t take long to find its feet.
Apes followed and immediately shifted the room’s temperature. There’s something inherently menacing about their sound, a low-slung, oppressive weight that settles in your shoulders whether you’ve invited it or not. Frontman Alexandre Goulet worked the crowd with humour and provocation, repeatedly encouraging people to fill the empty space left by previous Montreal hardcore fixtures. The invitations came with a wink, but the threat of a stray elbow always felt real. Their gloomy, lumbering attack carries its own personality, anchored by a three-guitar lineup that looks excessive on paper and sounds devastating in practice.
By the time Beneath The Massacre took the stage, the room was packed shoulder to shoulder. Their return had been framed as something special, an exclusive show prompted by an invitation from Despised Icon after five years away. They simply walked on and started playing. The effect was immediate. It had been long enough since I’d spent time with their material that I’d genuinely forgotten how absurdly skilled they are. Their music lives in a space where speed and complexity threaten to collapse under their own weight, yet somehow remain razor-focused. The Bradley brothers, switching seamlessly between tapping runs and intricate rhythmic shifts, were hypnotic. Watching a band execute material this demanding with apparent calm is always unsettling. It drew a different kind of pit, one based as much on awe as aggression.
Then there was Despised Icon themselves. This was an album launch for Shadow Work, but it never felt like a sales pitch. The record hovered over the night as context rather than centrepiece, a reference point for where the band is now. From A Fractured Hand straight through to Snake in the Grass and Bad Vibes, the band played with clarity and intent, letting their catalogue speak.
The energy in the room was relentless. Crowd surfing never stopped, stage dives came in waves, and yet there was an odd sense of order to the chaos. Alex Erian and Steve Marois shared vocal duties with the ease of people who know exactly when to push and when to let the crowd carry a moment. In The Arms Of Perdition and The Apparition drew some of the loudest responses of the night, while cuts like Death of an Artist and The Sunset Will Never Charm Us showed just how broad their appeal has become.
There was also something quietly satisfying about the details. The Messorem IPA created for the shows, tied to Erian’s day job, was being passed around like a badge of honour. It felt local in the best way, a reminder that for all the international recognition Despised Icon have earned, they remain deeply rooted in Montreal. They’re not the same band I first encountered in 2007, and that’s a good thing. Time has given them perspective, confidence, and a sense of scale that works both on record and on stage.
By the time they closed with Purgatory, the room was a sweat-soaked mess of smiles, bruises, and shared disbelief. What stood out most was how naturally the lineup fit together. Primal Horde, Apes, Beneath The Massacre, and Despised Icon each represented different facets of Quebec’s heavy music DNA, yet nothing felt out of place.
This weekend wasn’t about reclaiming past glories or proving relevance. It was about presence. Club Soda bore witness to a scene that knows exactly who it is, where it’s been, and how hard it can still hit.
Review & photos – Steve Gerrard
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