There’s something that’s flat-out wrong about Xibalba’s Demo 2010. It’s a queasy, warped atmosphere that sounds like the product of fried ‘n’ frazzled minds bending the black metal paradigm to their twisted collective will, whilst in the throes of a hallucinogen-fueled trip to Mictlan. The result is some very bizarre music, a metallic apocalypse that starts with a boombox playing a half-melted cassette copy of A Blaze in the Northern Sky at half speed while projectile vomiting peyote out of its speakers.
Musical ideas are thrown out seemingly at random by these Mexican psychonauts; torrents of heavily distorted, strangulated, minor key guitar-work compete with effects-laden vocals that occasionally sound like they’re emanating from a malfunctioning Speak & Spell and simplistic, heavy-handed yet barely there drum patterns within an incredibly dense mix. It’s a claustrophobic, paranoia-inducing listen; every bad drug experience you’ve ever had crammed into fifteen-odd minutes of tape and beamed back into your skull, destination madness.
In spite of all this talk of insanity and hallucinations, what truly stands out about Xibalba’s Demo 2010 is its stunning originality. Earlier I said that Xibalba were bending black metal to their collective will, but it goes further than that; the genre’s stylistic tenets are ripped and torn and reconfigured into strange and interesting new shapes, yet you get the feeling the band aren’t trying to be “weird” or “experimental,” this is simply what Xibalba does. In spite of the frenzied randomness that characterizes the band’s songwriting approach, each track flows seamlessly into the next, as if they composed one long psychoactive funeral procession and divided it into a five movement mind-trip.
There’s a lot of misuse of the word “ritual” within black metal circles. Xibalba’s Demo 2010 is ritual personified, a chaotic soulside journey painted in psychedelic shades of black. Its only flaw is that it’s over far too quickly, fading into the aether just as quickly as it appeared.
That’s it. This solidifies the fact that I need to replace my broken tape deck!
“The result is some very bizarre music, a metallic apocalypse that starts with a boombox playing a half-melted cassette copy of A Blaze in the Northern Sky at half speed while projectile vomiting peyote out of its speakers.”
And with one sentence you’ve driven me to purchase a tape deck.
What a great find! There’s something really wrong about how this sounds. So severe and bizarre.
Yeah, I really liked this tape. Totally original, IMO.