Hey there tech fiends, it's that time of the week again. Before we dive into today's focus, here's the usual reminder that if you're looking for more sick music, all prior editions of this series can be perused here.
Xenosis quickly became one of my favorite new tech-death bands on the progressive side of the spectrum in 2015 when they released their second album, Sowing The Seeds of Destruction. In fact, along with Sutrah's 2015 demo, it was the very first release I covered here in this space for Tech Death Tuesday. So I’m glad for things to come full circle and present today's early stream of their third album, Devour and Birth.
If you're new to the group, Xenosis mix-and-match progressive death metal, and technical death metal together in a way that defies simple explanation. Each song on Devour and Birth is a bit of both, though some do lean more towards one side or the other. The many ways Xenosis choose to combine and blend the two worlds together leads to incredibly fascinating and versatile songs on Devour and Birth. Three albums in and the group's interesting blend of 90's progressive death metal, modern tech-death, groove, progressive metal, and melodic death metal is a refined and lethal entity that's been sharpened into it's most evolved form yet.
The album opens on a no-holds-barred rampage with "Night Hag" and "Army of Darkness", two cutthroat and sometimes cerebral songs driven by innate skull-crushing intentions at their core. After that, the album branches out sonically on "Delirium (Death of a God)" and "Concave" which lean in heavily to the group's prog-death and groove sides, while still ensuring room for plenty of full-throttle intense passages in each song. A short instrumental called "Oxidation" follows that breaks up the pacing before the next dense and brain-scrambling song comes on. Which is "Ominous Opus", a killer track that lives up to its name as an intricate, multi-faceted composition continuing the album's trend where all the songs flip back-and-forth between super aggressive and solidly prog-death a number of times per song. Up next, the title track "Devour and Birth" and closer "The Projector" end the album on a high-octane and thrilling note, yet as is the norm for Xenosis's style, both are still plenty prog-death focused at the same time. It's a big part of what makes the music on Devour and Birth so much fun to listen to.
Xenosis's collective experience and their wide range of different influences as musicians allow them to color outside the lines with skill and graceful maturity on Devour and Birth. So jam Devour and Birth below, and if you’re digging it, you can order the album through the Xenosis Bandcamp Page ahead of its official release this Friday, January 19th. Be sure to follow the group over on the Xenosis Facebook Page as well.
