Xibalba is the Mayan underworld, and translates as ‘place of fear’. Right now, the road to the underworld is looming near in people’s consciousness, with 21st December 2012 witnessing an extremely close conjunction of the Winter Solstice Sun with the crossing point of the Galactic Equator (Equator of the Milky Way): it’s theorised that this is precisely the location of the ‘dark-rift’ in the Milky Way - the road to the underworld. Open the door to that road, and apocalypse ensues.
Xibalba, then, are appropriately named: ‘Hasta la Muerte’ would be a fitting soundtrack to the opening of the gates of hell. It’s seriously fucking heavy. Yes, it’s hardcore with a metal edge, but it’s also something more. Falling somewhere between grindcore and the super-sludge riffage of Fudge Tunnel, it’s wall-to-wall venom, the guitars cranked up to twelve and overdriven to the max to create a churning swamp of sound. Slow, doomy sections suddenly erupt volcanically into explosive, frenetic blasts of piledriving power. The result is a bleak, bottom-heavy sonic apocalypse. It might not exactly be fun, but it is the very definition of darkly uncompromising, and utterly hellish.
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