Xibalba
Hasta La Muerte
Southern
Lord Records
2012
With
their new album American hardcore heavyweights, Xibalba, are caught
taking the biggest breakdowns of hardcore and smashing them straight
into a bruised mass of down-tuned death metal. Though the
attitude of the band on the surface is jovial, this album is deadly
serious. No Serenity is like a battering ram made of
sledgehammers. It strikes quickly with speedy punches and then
drops into a sludgy death breakdown and this is a continuing theme for
the track. The drums have a sharp pop to them which is readily
noticeable during the opening passage of Soledad. The guitars
vomit out beefy riffs that crush your bones due to their sheer weight.
Shades of doomy death metal enter like a ninja assassin, with
stealth and lethality. A hopping mosh beatdown ensues as Laid To
Rest gets underway. The song is like the violence of a wrestling
match, it wears you down and slowly crushes the life out of you.
As the mammoth riffs of the song's internal workings churn away
like a wave of avalanches, you will notice there is a grinding quality
to the guitars. Chugging, meaty riffs strut out of your speakers
during Burn. A set of powerful breaks set up a segment of
blistering hardcore that scorches all the flesh from your face. A
neck-breaking mosh passage bludgeons your body further and brings the
song to its conclusion. Sinister doom riffs and a rolling drum
line usher in The Flood. At times I am reminded of Boltthrower or
Hail of Bullets, that is until the song starts to gain a slight bit of
momentum. I am left with a repetitive, undulating flow from that
instrumental. The final track on the album is a reworking of
their most popular song, Cold. Droning guitar shifts set the tone
before all hell breaks loose with a vast array of deathly riffs and
metalcore break downs. The song leaves you overwhelmed and
exhausted as one flurry of speedy hardcore butts up against a
lethargic, dragging set of doom riffs. The violent mosh sections
reach a zenith at the 4:17 mark. The production on this album
perfectly captures the deep tone of the guitar and makes it sludgy
in all the right places. Xibalba use their doom death influenced
hardcore as a slow-motion jackhammer that ensures the listener is left
with no doubt that hardcore isn't all about youth-crew shout-alongs!
It can be about darkness, violence, and smothering heaviness.