Review Summary: Together, unchained as stars erupt in harmony.
The search for grace within brutality seems to be an enduring obsession under the dome of modern metal. Through a revolving door of lineups and a high-gloss sci-fi lens, Fallujah’s musical evolution has undergone significant sonic reinventions without losing core directives, yet they have not always supported the detours they have taken particularly well. After kicking it off in a deathcore suit for a few years, the band jumped into a silver pool of ambience and ornate fretwork with
The Flesh Prevails in 2014, an album that managed to turn a lot of heads, yet had an overly loud production that for some (including me) was almost a dealbreaker. Follow-ups were more contentious, as both
Dreamless in 2016 and especially
Undying Light in 2019 were something of stylistic misfires in midtempo vagueness that landed with all the force of a soft sigh on a pillow, but a needed re-alignment brought the shimmering but bruised return to good form in 2022 and
Empyrean, which was at the very least more convincing and far away from previous creative wreckage.
Entering
Xenotaph, the band has now made peace with its contradictions and confidently expands upon its very own progressive death metal framework, a tug of war between polished progressions and fractal riffing on whiplash tempo shifts, where the growls sparingly coexist with a variety of clean vocals that has considerably increased in amount compared to previous releases. While the album leans heavily into clean sheen at the expense of teeth, Fallujah have seemingly found a new sense of intent in this continuous juxtaposition of vaporous, wide-angle post-metal passages and serrated tech death architecture, with ghosts from
The Flesh Prevails lurking in the background, yet
Xenotaph is far from a trip down memory lane. Some weight has been sacrificed in the process of veering towards cosmic immersion and further away from technical hysteria, but still the band has taken respectable steps in improving the exactitude and cohesion of its material, despite emphasizing so much on its diverse components.
The whole album advances at this mercurial pace, maintaining the tension at red while the band demonstrates its indisputably high level of musicianship. You’ll get the full experience in tracks like “Kaleidoscopic Waves”, “The Crystalline Veil” and “Step Through the Portal and Breathe”, which represent the nucleus of
Xenotaph and reach the whole musical palette the band has to offer in 2025, in all its unpredictable and turbulent glory. Right out of a womb nurtured by bands such as Intronaut / Between the Buried and Me, and Obscura / Spawn of Possession, there is a lot of meat to chew on for fans of these bands, or generally spacious, lush extreme metal in high production and flashy colours. Slightly less impactful for me were the shorter tracks, the somewhat mild opener “In Stars We Drown” and then “The Parasitic Dream”, which unfortunately isn’t as memorable as the aforementioned blasters. On the other hand,
Xenotaph shines when both its extremes are in the spotlight, e.g. in “Labyrinth of Stone” (but please save yourselves from watching the video clip).
For me, it’s not until the last two chapters of the record that the real highlights start. The unexpectedly darker and heavier “The Obsidian Architect”, especially at the breakdown-like segment in its first half, shows Fallujah at their most combative form. The closing, self-titled track, is the longest of the album and the closest the band has come in creating something of beauty and grace in tandem, and as balanced as possible. Heading into the end of
Xenotaph, the grace we were looking for at the beginning of this text was almost found. The album does hit its emotional signposts, as it’s also lyrically invested in the fascination with outer space and inner collapse, but still, the aftertaste it left me was more of a feeling of restraint rather than catharsis. For all the album’s intensity, I could not shake the feeling that the band still played with the safety rails on, and I can say I sort of missed a moment capable of fully collapsing your ribcage. That, though, is not to take away from an otherwise bold and exciting record, that shows Fallujah at their most focused since 2014, and charged with ambition.
