Xenith – To No Avail
Xenith – To No Avail
Self Released
Release date: 28/08/26
Review by: Jon Deaux
6/10
“To No Avail” is a title so descriptive that it should come attached to a safety warning sticker on the shrink wrap. The very sensation of a thousand riffs being quantized to a click-track, told to sit down and wait their turn.
XENITH have made it known they have been studying the likes of At The Gates and Opeth. As such, they have no shortage of tremolo runs and gang vocals in the choruses to back that claim up. To No Avail is a debut album filled entirely with good decisions – the correct influences, correct producer, correct detours into blast beats – and somehow, somewhere along the way, the album failed to make any actual threats to the listener.
Billy Hourigan growls competently throughout all ten tracks, never once seeming offended by anything happening in his presence, which is truly a problem when you are singing about inciting the tragedy. Incitement has stakes involved. This sounds like a man reading a strongly worded email into the microphone. Casey Dennis is quite clearly talented technically – the harmonized guitar solos in ‘Killer Instinct’ and ‘Bludgeoned’ are definitely authentic Gothenburg riffs, the kind that used to mean someone’s collarbone was about to be snapped – but the songs are constructed rather than lived in. You can point at them – there is the Slaughter of the Soul breakdown, the Blackwater Park melancholy bridge – but nothing comes in here unannounced, and melodic death metal thrives on the ambush.
Cam Shuck’s mixing doesn’t improve matters for the album in question. Every part sits where it is supposed to sit – the drums here, the guitars there, bass somewhere else entirely filling out paperwork – and nothing crosses into another part, which is absolutely backwards for a genre based on feeling chaotic. The reputation of this particular subgenre of extreme metal was built entirely on controlled chaos. To No Avail has more of the former and none of the latter, a car accident choreographed to perfection.
However, the album is not completely devoid of remembering its purpose. On ‘Descending,’ they find a groove and stick to it, instead of giving up on it after a few seconds from the misguided notion of having to respect the riff count. The last minute of ‘Arteries’ sounds like the band fighting against the song, instead of reading the sheet music. And that last minute is easily the best part of the entire album, proving that XENITH do know precisely what they are holding back everywhere else. On the tenth track, closer ‘Out Of Contempt,’ the band gives their album a title that serves as an unsolicited album review, and I am taking that offer. Contempt is not for the talent of the band, which is definitely impressive. It is for how much of it got whittled away in the studio.
This is an impressive album, crafted by artists who definitely had an opportunity to make something uncomfortable.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Take Me Back Where I Belong
02. Alone
03. Bludgeoned
04. Incite The Tragedy
05. No Time To Waste
06. Descending 01:56
07. Killer Instinct
08. Arteries
09. The Weight To Pretend
10. Out Of Contempt
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