Xenosis
Of Chaos and Turmoil

Just a little excerpt from the wikipedia to set you in the mood of things: “Xenozoonosis, also known as zoonosis or xenosis, is the transmission of infectious agents between species via a xenograft. Animal to human infection is normally rare, but has occurred in the past. An example of such is the avian influenza, when an influenza A virus was passed from birds to humans. Xenotransplantation may increase the chance of disease transmission for 3 reasons: 1. Implantation breaches the physical barrier that normally helps to prevent disease transmission, 2. The recipient of the transplant will be severely immunosuppressed; and 3. Human complement regulators (CD46, CD55, and CD59) expressed in transgenic pigs have been shown to serve as virus receptors, and may also help to protect viruses from attack by the complement system.”

I would say that is a clever name that should bear witness to a clever band, but does it? The quartet from England are said to be hard working (I hate that line in a press release) which is a bit of a turnoff. There are more clichés in the press release as well: they have thousands of combined hours in the studio and on the stage, they have shared stages with some bands and they are well rounded professionals. Oh no, this is not a band this is a fucking press release for a product someone is desperate to sell, had I read this before I heard the album I would have stayed as far away from it as possible because cliché press releases only accompany bad bands (with few exceptions).

What about them then? They are said to be progressive death metal and that is somewhat true in that they are old school death metal with progressive touches, it is nice with a death metal band that stops you to take notice at some parts in their songs. But to be honest, it isn’t really that much of that and the only reason why you should think that the overall picture of this album is anything but an old school death metal album is if you are an old school death metal fan because then your frame of reference is very narrow. It is traditional in the gurgling vocals, the smattering drums and the dull guitar lines. The heaviness is about as frightening as a kitten trying to appear a lion, kind of pathetic especially considering that they are a grey-white kitten which is short-haired as well. Not very heavy and in all honesty not really that different from any other death metal either, even the production is the same as most. I wouldn’t call it progressive if I was labelling it.

Not progressive then, but is it any good? Well, not really. It does not make me vomit, I will give it that much. The songs are not really all terrible either and there are some nice, clever and good stuff there as well but it is all drowned by the boring death metal stuff. Sure there are some good old school death metal as well but this isn’t quite there as the singer is boring me to death, the progressiveness is just there for alibi for them to label them something different, and the sound is terrible. The album is rubbish to be honest. Sure there are some reviewers that like it I have seen, but also many who are not as positive so the question remains wether or not it is worth it, I am not a death metal fan myself but I do like progressive music and this I don’t like. Make up your own mind from that.

Thing is, this is not an interesting album, if they had gone mad and lived out the promise of jazz and whatever else the press release was lying about then maybe it would have been very good. There is some potential here but overall they are too cautious and to afraid to really fall outside the frame or go against the grain that they end up boring. This album’s best parts are the cover art and the band name, the rest could have remained undone. It also raises a good question: why is progressive rock/metal so little progressive these days? answer that one if you can...

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