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Yet another band who would have to list Vektor as an inspiration, as this is high-speed, very technical Death/Thrash with a blackened edge. Vektor themselves only managed to hit one time with this formula of aggressive sci-fi/horror, and the bands they spawned with Black Future have been more miss than hit with me, for all that I love the idea of it. This is the third album for Xoth, and I remember thinking their debut Invasion of the Tentacube was interesting but kind of all over the place. Exogalactic shows a band much more in control of what they want to do.

Not too in control, since the over-the-edge chaos is kind of the point of the exercise, harking back to those early Voïvod albums in spirit if not really in sound. This is much cleaner and sharper, with nimble melodic leads beaming through the mayhem like starlight. The songs are dense with time changes and shifting riffs, but they manage to maintain a lot of energy and don't lose their way in all the twists and turns. I find this album actually kind of gains momentum as it goes, and by the time you hit "The Parasitic Orchestra" things are really hitting. Feral, technical, intensely melodic and endlessly inventive, this is not one to miss.