XUL — Malignance (review)

XUL — Malignance album cover Album · 2012 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
Time Signature
Hordes of black...

Genre: blackened death metal

Hailing from the dark forests of Vernon Canada, Xul released their debut album "Malignance" last summer (to be honest, I have no idea if there are dark forests near Vernon, but Xul's band photos would certainly seem to indicate that there are). As far as I know, the album has received a lot of praise from fans and critics alike.

Xul operate within the genre of blackened death metal, taking cues from blackened death metal giants like Behemoth, black metal legends like Immortal and Mayhem, as well as death metal demigods like Morbid Angel. They have taken all of these inspirations and combined them into their own artistically highly successful brand of blackened death metal, which features the brutality of death metal and the darkness and evil of black metal. Thus, you get and album the treats you to both the machine-gun bassdrums, guttural vocals, and technically proficient playing associated with death metal and the tense harmonies, tremolo picking, and blazing blastbeats associated with black metal.

This combination in itself is of course already one that has a lot of potential for great things (and plenty of great thing resulting from this combination are found throughout "Malignance"). However, there is another ingredient to the Xul sound, and that is melody. There is actually a lot of melody in their sound - much of which is generated in the harmonies in the riffs (interestingly, this reminds me of one of the demos by the obscure Danish death metal band Cyanotic). The guitar leads are also very melodic, and at the same time pretty impressive and technically advanced (just check out the sweep technique used).

The production is clean and well-defined and characterized by professionalism, as are all aspects of the music itself. And, still, you can actually acquire the album on Bandcamp at a price of your own choice.

Xul's "Malignance" is a huge artistic success and captures what I consider to be the best from both death metal and black metal.
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