To the ears of this humble fan and writer, there is just
something more interesting about progressive heavy bands, or even bands that
inject a little progressiveness into their sound, than about non-progressive
bands. It’s the increased dynamic awareness, the greater imagination in the
arrangements, the superior compositional nous, on top of the higher levels of
musicianship, that progressive bands display.
Perth’s Xenobiotic are an undeniably
progressive-leaning death metal band. Their sound is as brutal, intense and
savage as just about any band that exists within what could be considered the ‘mainstream’
of the worldwide heavy music spectrum, but their music is rife with the
aforementioned progressive elements, and this maintains the interest levels
across the course of an album’s length. And then keeps you coming back to draw
from the musical well repeatedly.
Well, it does for this humble writer anyway.
Mordrake, the band’s sophomore album, brings that
joyous dichotomy to the ear of the listener that skilful bands like this do so
well: the music is weighty and oppressive, it expresses a sense of depressive
doom that weighs on your psyche (although they are certainly not doom band, it
just exists in the general aesthetic), and in doing so is uplifting and
provides cascades of musical enjoyment, listen after listen after listen. It
sounds like a contradiction, but it ain’t. Try it, you’ll see what I mean.
With an album like this, the brutality of the music and the
vocals and the razor-sharpness of the production are what draw you in
initially. Then it’s the songrcraft, the light, shade and variation within the
sound and the interesting, well thought out conceptual and meaningful nature of
the 11 tracks on offer here that keep you coming back. This album is not one
long blast beat (although blast beats certainly play their part at times),
there are moods, colours, atmospherics, twists and turns that make this record
a real journey across blistering but fascinating soundscapes.
There’s no point singling out individual song highlights,
this record is wall to wall quality, an album that is at its best when listened
to end to end in track order, the order in which the creators intended it to be
experienced. Of course, that is not to say that you can’t drop in anywhere and
find enjoyment in this age of streaming, playlists and goldfish-level attention
spans.
If there is any justice in the music world, Mordrake will be a landmark album in the Aussie extreme music canon. Only time will tell, but it absolutely deserves it.