Xantossa - Only Metal Band at a Contest
The world is in the grip of an anti-smoking campaign and The Netherlands is also falling for it; on the 26th of January there was a band contest in De Peppel, Zeist which recently had to ban smoking. It sucks, but it couldn’t hold me from checking out this contest, well, actually only Xantossa because it was the only metal band participating.
Xantossa unfortunately had the hard task to open the evening, but right from the beginning they had a pretty big following. The band was founded in 2005 and already plays a fine set of death metal in the vein of bands like Grave and Bolt Thrower. The majority of the material is in a mid tempo which grooves well and occasionally a blast beat storms in. Singer Sander Boere has a deep, low grunt like Glen Benton, but he adds some filthiness which gives the music a little gore twist, every now and then we also get to hear some blackish screams. The whole is taken to next level by the tightness of the guitar player; he provides a real solid fundament. Screwball of the quartet was the bass player in his totally Nike outfit and it was a weird sight when a birthday cake was brought on stage for the singer, but it didn’t harm the show too much and gave me a good laugh. Because it was a band contest the show was way too short and Xantossa didn’t win, but who cares; I got what I came for and that was a nice show of death metal.
An entire demo can be downloaded from their site which was recorded live at the same venue as the show of this night; a new demo should be available soon.