Review: Fallujah – Xenotaph

Artwork by: Peter Mohrbacher

Style: Progressive Technical Death Metal, Technical Death Metal, Death Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rivers of Nihil, Kardashev, The Zenith Passage, Allegaeon, Vale of Pnath
Country: California, United States
Release date: 13 June 2025

The intersection of death metal and science-fiction has always felt a tad strange when viewed from on high. When most people hear “death metal,” they undoubtedly think of aggressive music centered on viscera, violence, and, well… death. Knuckle-dragging riffs, blast beats, and Cookie Monster vocals. The genre hardly feels like it would pair well with the grand and often philosophical aims of the science-fiction genre. Yet, thanks to early pioneers like Atheist with 1991’s Unquestionable Presence and Cynic with 1993’s Focus, death metal showed its capacity for expansion, its ability to adopt an ethos closer in proximity to sci-fi’s. Nowadays, progressive death metal is nothing new, with acts like An Abstract Illusion, Blood Incantation, Horrendous, and Kardashev offering grand and expansive material focused on far more than simple blood and guts.

Lurking among this galactic pantheon of heady prog-deathers is California’s Fallujah. Blending together clean vocals and introspective synth-baked passages with space-bending guitar acrobatics, monstrous growls, and warp-capable drumming, Fallujah carved out their nexus in this strange interstitial space between death metal’s brutality and sci-fi’s “thinking man’s” ideals starting with 2014’s celebrated The Flesh Prevails. Subsequent releases only strengthened this position, the band undiminished despite numerous lineup changes across the years. Having last left us with 2022’s spellbinding codex, Empyrean, Fallujah have emerged from the void once more to impart on us their sixth full-length. Does Xenotaph represent a continuing ascension into the stars, or have the thrusters begun to fail?

I don’t think we need to alert Earth of any imminent impacts; after clearing the semi-intro track, we get hit with “Kaleidoscopic Waves,” a ripping piece of progressive technical death metal that erupts against the ears like a star gone supernova. The band unleash a fusilade of computational guitar work and hull-cracking percussion against soft beds of atmospheric synths while vocalist Kyle Schaefer shreds reality and soothes the celestial wounds alike with his arsenal of growls and cleans. The rest of Xenotaph plays out similarly across the forty-two minute runtime, though that’s not to say every track is simple repetition. Cuts like “The Crystalline Veil” see Schaefer bringing in metalcore-coded cleans atop stitches of jazzy death drumming, while follow-up “Step Through the Portal and Breathe” includes several grooved-out sections (including an extended bass solo) as the track vents the death metal-heat sinks to exude The Contortionist vibes. Then there’s penultimate track “The Obsidian Architect,” whose production crushing drops bring to mind acts like Humanity’s Last Breath, before offering some of Schaefer’s most melodic cleans and punk-y screams. They also throw on the vocoder for some especially alien spoken word-style bits.

Anyone familiar with Fallujah’s past works will ultimately find little of surprise here, but there’s something breathtaking about their approach on Xenotaph nonetheless—like watching a star collapse in horror before marveling at the painterly sight of the cosmic aftermath, colorful gases tracing esoteric frameworks against the deep-black of space. For my money, they’ve stayed a largely consistent act since The Flesh Prevails¹—no mean feat for any band, but especially one as technically-minded as Fallujah. Of course, there’s a capacity for sameness in progressive music that I think sometimes goes overlooked, and “consistent” can veer dangerously close to that. Xenotaph finds ways to keep things interesting—the heightened use (and more varied style) of cleans from Schaefer, along with some of the aforementioned flourishes populating several of the tracks. But by and large this is another Fallujah record; spacey, ferociously technical, whiplashing from moment to moment like a spacecraft caught between multiple gravitational pulls. If you like your songs to be identifiable, whether by riff or some semblance of easy-to-recognize structure, Xenotaph may struggle to meet your measure with its ever-shifting, mercurial forms. Also, the album can come across as fairly loud, bordering on wall of sound at times, though the mix is dynamic enough that nothing ever really gets drowned out.

There’s little Xenotaph will do to alienate fans, I think—unless for some reason you’ve become sick of metalcore vocals, but then I would argue Fallujah haven’t been the band for you since 2014. That said, I could see listeners sitting on both sides of the proverbial galactic fence: those who welcome the album’s consistency, happy to have more of a band they appreciate, and those who have perhaps grown a bit weary with the band’s direction. I fall more towards the former camp. A Fallujah record always feels like a pretty big deal to me, and Xenotaph is no exception. Though the album does little to tread any truly new sonic ground for the band, sometimes a journey needn’t be new to still be exciting. Fallujah have cultivated a strong identity for themselves, wreathed in atmospheres of celestial splendor and terrestrial violence alike. Maybe someday down the line, the adventure will wane, but that time hasn’t come yet. Xenotaph is a trip worth taking.

Recommended tracks: Step Through the Portal and Breathe, Xenotaph, Kaleidoscopic Waves, The Obsidian Architect
You may also like: Eccentric Pendulum, Cosmitorium, Cognizance, Irreversible Mechanism, Virvum, Freedom of Fear
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Nuclear Blast Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Fallujah is:
– Scott Carstairs (guitars)
– Evan Brewer (bass)
– Kyle Schaefer (vocals)
– Sam Mooradian (guitars)
With guests:
– Kevin Alexander La Palerma (drums)

1. A controversial opinion given the critical reception to Fallujah’s 2019 LP The Undying Light. ↩︎