I love the Alien film franchise—yes, even Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection. I also love brutal slamming death metal/deathcore. Italy’s Hideous Divinity mixed the two on their LV426 EP back in 2021, but France’s Xenotheory has entered the fray with their second album does to the genre what Aliens did to the films.

Their 2022 debut, Dawn of An Eyeless Realm, got the band on my radar, but with this year’s Alien Romulus film being released and reinvigorating my interest in the franchise, they aren’t just on my radar, they are..wait for it…..bursting from my goddamn chest.

The band’s Xeno universe-based (books, comics, and film), mid-paced downtempo slamming brutality is absolutely pummeling, and add the Alien-verse-based lyrics (some obscure, some not) and samples, and it’s a perfect mix, the only thing that would get me harder is a Gladiator-themed symphonic/blackened deathcore band.

Xenotheory is heavy. Fucking heavy. The main focus of the music is more downtempo, controlled slopes and lurches that are more in the Distant, The Last Ten Seconds of Life, Impuritan and Black Tongue realm, though there are blast beats here and there (i.e. “The Fortieth Night”, “Le Dixième Cercle pt 1”). Like the debut, many of the songs also contain some samples (it used some from the 1979 Alien film), though I can’t place many of them (other than “Ozymandias”, influenced by Alien Covenant), the as well as subtle FX, and slight use of synths that whine and hum menacingly like the engines of the Nostromo in the background of many of the songs.

The album’s 11 (literally) monstrous songs are all head-splitting, chest-bursting songs of steady but sheer, lurching menace. From the openers “Resurrection” and “The Chasm” through “Ozymandias”, “Eclipse”, “The Call” (ft. Crown Magnetar‘s Dan Tucker), “Son of Man” (ft. Jason Gerhard from Kanine and Danny Louzon from Hurakan) to the closing two-part duo of “Le Dixième Cercle”, the album is just a goddamn nonstop beatdown of the highest order.

I’m not sure how these guys are not on Lacerated Enemy, Reality Fade, or Unique Leader Records yet, as this is my clear slam record of the year  ( though Peeling Flesh, Infectious Jelking and an Analepsy reissue are in the mix), but I guess… ….In Space, no one can hear you slam.

[Visit the band's website]

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