Nox – Ixaxaar
Wicked World – WICK21CD – February 19, 2007
By Oliver Holm
Tiresome, detail-saturated review introductions that combine factual information from Metal Archives with zounds of verbose overstatements – to hell with those! Let us for once start out with a neat, trimmed and concise rundown of this latest Wicked World release. That could for instance be ‘fast, furious and forceful death metal with references to classic Morbid Angel and Deicide’. Or, allow me to cut that down a bit further... Ixaxaar sounds like an ‘old-school, less NY-br00tal version of the latest Severe Torture release’. And it can be done in ever fewer words: the debut album from this foursome-recently-turned-trio is perhaps best described as ‘the definitive advent of Centurian 2.0’.
Wearing said influences and erstwhile musical commitments on their sleeves, Nox churn out nine tracks of tradition-bound death metal that, albeit well-executed and assertive, comes across a bit too formulaic and trite after but two or three consecutive listens. Make no mistake: these four DM-veterans wield their instruments like ravenous wolves tear into the warm intestines of a fresh reindeer-carcass, and each frenzied riff or relentless drumbeat reeks of tenacious conviction. Yet, there is not much of a ‘wow-factor’ to all this so-called choronzonic chaos and thus not much to elevate the band above the cut-throat multitude of extreme-metal contenders, let alone enable the listener to differentiate one track from the other sans constant track-list observation.
This is brutal music in one of its most reliable and conventional forms. All the same, Ixaxaar remains a rock-solid slab of timeless, if featureless death metal that will doubtless thrill fans of all stuff affiliated and rock the bonnets off of those who still bemoan the disbandment of Centurian.
Official Nox MySpace Site
Official Wicked World Website
Wicked World – WICK21CD – February 19, 2007
By Oliver Holm
Tiresome, detail-saturated review introductions that combine factual information from Metal Archives with zounds of verbose overstatements – to hell with those! Let us for once start out with a neat, trimmed and concise rundown of this latest Wicked World release. That could for instance be ‘fast, furious and forceful death metal with references to classic Morbid Angel and Deicide’. Or, allow me to cut that down a bit further... Ixaxaar sounds like an ‘old-school, less NY-br00tal version of the latest Severe Torture release’. And it can be done in ever fewer words: the debut album from this foursome-recently-turned-trio is perhaps best described as ‘the definitive advent of Centurian 2.0’.
Wearing said influences and erstwhile musical commitments on their sleeves, Nox churn out nine tracks of tradition-bound death metal that, albeit well-executed and assertive, comes across a bit too formulaic and trite after but two or three consecutive listens. Make no mistake: these four DM-veterans wield their instruments like ravenous wolves tear into the warm intestines of a fresh reindeer-carcass, and each frenzied riff or relentless drumbeat reeks of tenacious conviction. Yet, there is not much of a ‘wow-factor’ to all this so-called choronzonic chaos and thus not much to elevate the band above the cut-throat multitude of extreme-metal contenders, let alone enable the listener to differentiate one track from the other sans constant track-list observation.
This is brutal music in one of its most reliable and conventional forms. All the same, Ixaxaar remains a rock-solid slab of timeless, if featureless death metal that will doubtless thrill fans of all stuff affiliated and rock the bonnets off of those who still bemoan the disbandment of Centurian.
Official Nox MySpace Site
Official Wicked World Website
