Style: Technical Death Metal, Deathcore (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Vale of Pnath, Black Crown Initiate, Fallujah
Review by: Cooper
Country: Australia
Release date: 2 September, 2022
With Hate Monolith, Xenobiotic delivers a gleaming assortment of neck-breakingly heavy and relentlessly brutal technical death metal that will leave you in a bloodied, pulverized heap and begging for more. Comprised of five new tracks and five live studio session recordings of previously released material, the EP sees the band refining and expanding upon the sound that was established on Mordrake, their last release. Mordrake ended up being one of my favorite death metal albums of 2020, and I am happy to say that Hate Monolith is even better.
The EP begins with “Autophagia”, an incessant monster of a song that – from the moment you hit play – speeds forward with a vicious intent to kill. The drums are like cannons. The guitar riffs ride the razor’s edge between finger-tangling technicality and bone-crushing brutality. And the vocals bark and hiss along, never stagnant thanks to an impressively varied mix of vocal techniques and double-tracking/panning studio magic. This is what Hate Monolith has to offer, and, boy, does it do it well.
Within the tsunami of sound that Xenobiotic conjures on Hate Monolith, there are few moments where the waters are calm enough to catch your breath. “Nether” begins with the only clean guitar passage on the EP’s new material, but – just as you grow complacent – submerges you again into dark and roiling waters with a piercing vocal pickup that leads into one of the heaviest riffs of this year. Other songs, like “The Wretched Strive” and “Pathos”, feature perfectly implemented caesuras that make the climaxes that come after genuinely crippling. It’s moments like these that elevate Hate Monolith to the upper echelons of tech death and demonstrate the importance of tension in metal music. Whether they know it or not, Xenobiotic have created a masterclass on tension with Hate Monolith.
The live studio session recordings, while not nearly as impressive as the new material, offer a unique look into a rawer Xenobiotic without as much studio makeup. Honestly, these tracks could have been removed without impacting my enjoyment, but they do highlight my one complaint with Hate Monolith: the mixing. Unfortunately, all of the new material on Hate Monolith falls victim to the notorious pitfall of a “brickwalled” mix. Simply put, the songs lack dynamics and textural nuance. The live studio sessions are actually much more dynamically nuanced because each individual note hasn’t been compressed and clipped into uniformity. An ideal mix would lay somewhere between the extremes of a live sound and a “brickwalled” sound, but Hate Monolith swings much too far towards the latter. It is a small complaint, but it keeps the EP from reaching its true potential.
If Hate Monolith is any sign of what is to come from Xenobiotic, then the technical death metal landscape is about to be altered for the better.
Recommended tracks: The Wretched Strive, Sever the Ties
You may also like: Alustrium, Warforged
Final verdict: 8.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Unique Leader Records – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook
Xenobiotic is:
– Nish Raghavan (guitars)
– TJ Sinclair (vocals)
– Cam Moore (guitars)
– David Finlay (bass)
– Mikey Godwin (drums)
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