XIL - Rip & Tear Review

Ah, Speed Metal hell. The power, the glory, the speed, the riffing, the force. My dear fan doesn’t know how I envy all those guitarists that play their riffs so simple and yet so effective. As I said here before so many times when I think of a Metal song I always imagine it as Speed Metal. Always. It’s just something that is stuck in my mind. I really can’t explain why that happens. So, once in a while when we with Metal Addicts have a Speed Metal album to review I keep having in my mind how the songs would be.

“Rip & Tear” is kicked off with the most typical Speed Metal way with an avalanche of tons of power of the guitars and the drums. I mean, the intro of tittle track “Rip & Tear” deceives the fan in the very initial seconds. Well, this is also a stapler of Speed Metal albums when many bands started their albums with something that was very far from their musical proposal. This is exactly what happens here with the track which, then, suddenly and out of the blue the song changes into a musical butchery. In many ways this track reminds the 1980s Slayer from “Show No Mercy” era. The short riffing with the speed of light drumming plus a harsh vocal makes the fan have no doubt of what he’s listening: the good old Speed Metal hell. Second track just changes the influence. Now, “Speedemons” and “Learn to Bleed” honor the Teotonic masters of Speed as Iron Angel or Angel Dust. The instrumentals are plain and straight ahead into your face guitar riffing interwoven with some melody to break all the spanking and pounding. “Breakneck”? Well, the tittle covers it all, doesn’t it?

I noticed that the more I go through “Rip & Tear” the more I remember Venom. The feeling started with “Motorcharge” with the desperate and full of wrath vocals. Just the way Venom’s Cronos used to do. It’s with “Moonlight Mass” that the feeling grows stronger due to the slow and cadenced intro that goes all hell’s breaking loose when the Cronosish vocals comes. The plot twists the song does in its nine minutes are amazing. With it XIL prove that Speed Metal bands can make longer songs as they are pretty rare into the discography. Bands do prefer shorter songs. “Moonlight Mass” has nine minutes of a total and complete insanity.

XIL “Rip & Tear” will be released on February 25th.

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