Xibalba: Hasta La Muerte

     
          Southern Lord // 2012
          Dropped by Robert Miller

Xibalba’s latest album, Hasta La Muerte, is seemingly everything I could ever want in a hardcore release. The Pomona, California-based brutal quintet is named after the Mayan underworld—”the place of fear”—where about 12 gods were supposed to reign over a number of human agonies, such as death, disease, starvation, and more. The cover is both a beautiful and dismal portrait of an ominous temple, and the name, Hasta La Muerte, translates in English to “until death”! Everything screams larger than life, theatrical, conceptual and enthralling. Plus, Sunn O)))’s Greg Anderson shows up on a few tracks, giving the typical hardcore this sludge-y, doom-like resonance. I’m already loving everything about it.

Yet what a full listen through Hasta La Muerte ultimately gives me isn’t entirely what I was set up for. To put it bluntly: it hits as heavy and as consistently as any hardcore album I’ve ever heard before, but with little in the way of a trademark. If you ever listened to the hardcore band Terror—also hailing from California—or even Chicago’s grindcore-leaning Weekend Nachos, then you’ve got a pretty good idea of what you’re getting yourself into here. From bellowing over the “powers that would be” on “Laid to Rest,” crushing the hell out of D-beats via “Sentenced” and endlessly breaking down on “Soledad,” you get a pretty thorough synopsis of the album as a whole. Xibalba are not afraid to flex their mosh-loving muscles, and they don’t even understand the term “humility,” because this album is as consequently tyrannical as it could ever have been.

For those hardcore enthusiasts, this is a great album. The consistency of endless hardcore breakdowns is like the equivalent of a quick fast-food stop—it’ll satisfy your moshing alter ego in mere seconds. On top of that, it does come with an almost doom metal mentality that’s slightly refreshing. The opener, “No Serenity,” is an evil and droning piece, featuring what sound like ritual chants; and closer “Cold” is a longer rumbling doom piece that surely had Anderson’s grimy hands all over it from start to finish. And when the female vocals show up on “Mala Mujer,” it’s at least a stark contrast from the rest of the growling vocals, even though it’s a little oddly placed.

Hasta La Muerte is as good of a hardcore album that you’re going to get. The tight-knit community with the California band is honorable in itself. The band’s Facebook profile proudly and simply claims, “Brown Pride.” in its bio section. And while that might not translate so clearly to any passerby who just happens to hear this one album and nothing more, it’s at least noteworthy to anyone interested in digging into their discography. But when push comes to shove—or in this case, push comes to windmill kick—I’m left with nothing more than redundancies and primal instincts. Thankfully, Xibalba gives doom its darkened chance on this album, and it will resonante more clearly than any other hardcore knockoff you’ll probably hear this year, but when it comes to breaking molds and stereotypes, I still wish Xibalba’s push was a little more shove.

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Listen to Xibalba’s “Laid to Rest” off of Hasta La Muerte via Southern Lord below: