My thoughts on “THE DESTROYER : [catastrophe] [feat. Cazqui’s Brutal Orchestra]”, one of several recent digital singles from miscast.

Release Date: April 7th 2021

Tracklist

1. THE DESTROYER : [catastrophe] [feat. Cazqui’s Brutal Orchestra]

At this point pretty much every currently active Idol group has embraced digital streaming in some way shape or form. Some of them a lot more than others but the events of the past year…and a half really changed the game as far as this sort of thing is concerned. Whether this change is good or not probably depends on if you’re trying to actually make money from sales of your music or not, but as a fan none of this stuff has ever been this accessible so I hope you’re all enjoying the ride.

miscast were very early adopters of digital distribution, with their first foray happening at the start of 2020. Since then they’ve released a slew of digital singles featuring a whole host of genres blended up with their base Metalcore sound. They also like to collaborate with different bands, producers, etc so you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get from one release to the next. It’s usually always very well arranged and produced though so even if the genre of choice might not be one of your favorites at least the track is sure to be of a really high quality.

Well miscast are back with another run of digital singles and they’re once again working with some pretty interesting collaborators. This time out it’s with Cazqui’s Brutal Orchestra, the solo project of former NOCTURNAL BLOODLUST guitarist Cazqui which features vocalist DEXCORE and puts out some pretty extreme sounding Metalcore from what my cursory research tells me. Perhaps unsurprisingly the stated goal of the track is to challenge peoples’ usual idea of Idol music and I imagine they’re probably going to do so quite effectively. Only one way to know for sure though so let’s take a listen and see what sort of brutality miscast have coming our way this time.

“THE DESTROYER : [catastrophe]” flirts with the idea of something akin to Gothic fantasy for a brief moment before we’re told to “Get your fucking hands up” explodes into this intense blast beat driven cacophony with a whole bunch of screaming and shouting besides. The orchestral side of things does come back to play a larger role in the track as it moves along a bit more though so we’re definitely getting what was advertised in that regard too. It creates an interesting contrast when woven together with the harsher, more intense elements of the track and at times it is a bit of a struggle to full appreciate as the louder side of the coin attempts to swallow the more gentle, intricate instrumentation whole. Throughout all of this, the miscast girls are turning in a fairly solid Digital Hardcore style vocal performance, with heavily vocoded melodies softening the track some more before they team up with DEXCORE for some of the sort of screaming brutality that most people were probably hoping for when they saw that this collaboration was in the works.

Lots of very familiar sounding stuff going on when it comes to this component of the track but I feel like the collaboration helped to push it into places that it wouldn’t have gone otherwise had this been solely a miscast production. I feel a similar sort of way about the instrumental too as I can’t see a world where miscast would have incorporated the sort of orchestral movements and the array of instruments that are heard here had they had to come up with it all themselves. I think that’s the major benefit to collaborations like this, the fact that an Idol group can push a song beyond their usual boundaries and as can be heard here the results feel as refreshing to the ear as they do powerful.

“THE DESTROYER : [catastrophe]” is another great collaboration that miscast have taken part in and whether you love them or hate them I think there’s a case to be made that this is the sort of thing that groups should be doing more often. Cazqui and DEXCORE both brought a lot to the track while not upstaging miscast in the slightest as far as I’m concerned. Sure, maybe we’re muddying the waters a bit when it comes to Idol groups and bands with stuff like this but the resulting songs are pretty great, it’s hard to deny that.

I’m looking forward to checking out the other couple of tracks in this latest series from miscast here in the not too distant future. I imagine there’s going to be a decent amount of variety to them though we are off to a pretty strong start here. Hopefully one of these tracks will really catch on and get miscast a bit more of the recognition that they certainly deserve at this point. I think that would be a pretty good end result from all of this, don’t you?