Following in the trend of bands like Meshuggah and Textures, Candlelight Records offers us Xerath from the U.K. These guys have just released their debut I upon the world, let’s see what it holds in store for us.

Well it is easy to hear that these guys are heavily influenced by the bands mentioned above and others in this department, but the emphasis might be more towards Textures though. I say this because the band incorporates a shitload of orchestrated music in their polyrhythmic metal mix. They manage to create some nice rhythmic grooves and layer it with all kinds of string sections and such. This is for me the point where it goes wrong, I simply just don’t like the way they use the orchestral elements. They don’t really add anything, something that genre-mates Textures do manage. Especially when I hit the intermezzo originally entitled ‘Interlude’ I draw the line. All of a sudden the orchestra soars in with a high volume like they’re standing right next to me, it’s really annoying and it doesn’t bring the music to a higher level at all.

 

And because of this uninteresting orchestral influence, most of the songs aren’t able to jump out and get a face of their own. The overall album sounds flattened with few peeks and thus gets boring quite quickly. If this polyrhythmic math metal is your cup of tea you might want to give this a try, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!