Style: Progressive Thrash Metal, Technical Blackened Death Metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Revocation, Slugdge, Blood Incantation
Review by: Cooper
Country: US-WA
Release date: 3 November, 2023
Here at the Progressive Subway, we only review releases from bands with less than 20,000 Spotify listeners. And while it isn’t a perfect metric, it’s the best method we have for determining what constitutes an “underground” band. When I first became a reviewer here, I chafed against the limit, constantly wanting to review bands with listener counts far greater, but as I continued writing and listening to underground music, I developed something of a sixth sense for knowing if a band would exceed our limit; be it by actually listening to a song or just by simply viewing cover artwork or the band’s social media output, it’s often quite obvious whether I’ll be able to review an album. This, however, was not the case with Exogalactic, the newest album from technical thrashers Xoth.
Before the album was released and as I listened to its singles, I would have bet large sums of money on Xoth being much more popular than they are; after all, their last album Interdimensional Invocations was more than worthy of praise in thrash, technical death metal, and prog circles. In fact, I only checked their Spotify to see just how popular they must be, so imagine my surprise when I found them to be not only beneath 20,000 monthly listeners but well beneath 10,000. Immediately, I claimed this album to review, much to the chagrin of my fellow reviewer Andy who had also assumed they were out of our reviewing range, and now you get to listen to me tell you how Exogalactic may finally be the album to bring Xoth the esteem they deserve.
The flavor of technical thrashing blackened death metal that Xoth deals will be familiar to fans of Slugdge’s 2018 masterpiece Esoteric Malacology, but where that album’s domain was djent-tinged psychedelia with a healthy dose of slug puns, Exogalactic sits squarely in the realm of dense, thrashy riffage and utterly pyrotechnical lead guitar work. These elements, combined with the album’s breakneck pace and sleek runtime, make Exogalactic one of the most thrilling albums I’ve heard all year. Take “Saga of the Blade,” for instance, one of the songs with the highest “riff-to-runtime ratios” on this album. From its electric intro and utterly vibrant, syncopated guitar and drum transition into the first verse to its final solo that makes me feel as though I’ve ascended into space, the sheer quantity of ideas on display within just a single song on this album is astounding; on first listen, it was damn near disorienting, but on repeat listens, I clued into the songwriting techniques Xoth employs to make this such an addicting record.
For one, when they are in fact repeating a riff instead of throwing something completely new at the listener, they are sure to never play it exactly the same way twice. This idea is embodied by the back half of “Manuscripts of Madness” where we see the song deliver two subtly infused breakdowns in a row that rely not upon complete changes in the music but upon more subtle tradings of tension and release. Whether it’s due to a slight change in the melody or a simple rhythmic shift, a riff never comes back again the way it did initially, making the moment when it does in fact shift into some new all the more natural. This technique is then aided by the album’s use of strophic song structures that, while usually something I try to avoid in my progressive metal, ensure the songs are immediately memorable, as though they have an inherently “classic” quality about them.
The cynical parts of me insist that I tell y’all that the songs all kinda sound the same and that just maybe Xoth is held back by their use of some of thrash metals lamer tropes, such as gang vocals and the barked half-clean vocals found on tracks like “Reptilian Bloodsport,” but the rest of me is having too much fun head banging to the intro of “Battlesphere.” All that is to say, Exogalactic is, without a doubt, the best thrash metal you’ll hear all year.
Recommended tracks: Saga of the Blade, Battlesphere
You may also like: Hath, Carnosus
Final verdict: 8.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: independent
Xoth is:
– Ben Bennett (bass)
– Jeremy Salvo (drums)
– Tyler Splurgis (guitars, vocals)
– Woody Adler (guitars, vocals)
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