Xeno

Apocalyze was sort of a guilty pleasure for yours truly, but I'm already starting to run out of excuses for Crossfaith. Two short years later and we find the band treading water with Xeno, which could have served as the ultimate "put up or shut up" watershed moment to quell the naysayers once and for all; instead Crossfaith appeared to have taken two steps back after the definite step forward that was the last album. These guys are a rather electrifying live act and their music is pretty fucking dirt simple when you boil it down. Imagine if rocky, groovy metalcore with a bouncy jaunt was fused with Darude's "Sandstorm." That pretty much sums up these guys at their best. The problem is that they fail to stick with what works, and when they miss the mark the result is strikingly irritating.

And since Xeno is an album of many stylistic risks, it goes without saying that the quality varies widely. Koie's vocals are a major point of contention here, but he isn't necessarily the biggest liability. His exhaled, metalcore scream is functional and he actually has a rather pleasant singing voice, which he sadly underutilizes in a big way. I'm less fond of that pseudo-speaking Atreyu inflection he leans on sporadically, which while nothing necessarily new as far as the band is concerned, still irritates me. The album is also dragged down by two monumental missteps, the first being the limp-wristed pseudo-balled "Tears Fall." Yes, that reminds me of Bullet for My Valentine. Koie sounds positively gonad-free, and the acoustic sections don't really sound that fleshed out to me. Even worse is "Wildfire," which contains rapping guest vocalists and is honestly so far out of left field I have trouble properly critiquing it. Maybe it works for what it is, but it certainly isn't for metal fans.

We run into even more problems concerning the synths. On Apocalyze we had more than a few songs that did a fair job of intermingling basic melodeath riffing with upbeat, club-centric electronica elements like "Hounds of the Apocalypse," 'We Are the Future" and "Eclipse." The riffs are even more degraded this time around, at their best kicking up a dust with some Disturbed-esque groove stuff, but rarely taking full advantage of the metal constituent in an appreciable context. Breakdowns are scarce but well integrated; although with weaker refrains it all just feels like padding for a money shot that simply never comes. To be fair, "Ghost in the Mirror" is pretty well done and reasonably anthemic with an earworm chorus. "Calm the Storm" opens up sounding too soft just like "Tears Fall," but it actually mitigates the drop-out sections fairly well - it still isn't the ideal outlet for these guys' talents, however. The remaining proper "metal" tracks are all interchangeable.

In the end, there just aren't enough invigorating synths to keep the remainder of the material afloat on Xeno. It really is this band's trump card, and they seemed to push it aside in favor of some experimental stuff that just doesn't cut the mustard at the end of the day. Closer "S.O.S." has some nifty riff constructions and a really neat electronica line about two-thirds through, but I'm unduly dissecting it in order to point out the positive points. The best track behind "Ghost in the Mirror" is actually the instrumental "Astral Heaven." Wow, I guess this is where the band hoarded all of the great synths. The closest parallel I can draw here is Shade Empire's "Ravine," what with the morose piano lines clashing against the dystopian epidermis of the uplifting synths. It stands in stark, stark contrast to the remainder of the album, which tries too hard to stand separate from Apocalyze; at least for the wrong reasons. It succeeds at this most of the time, but only to the band's detriment. A handful of good tracks can't save Xeno.