XCES - It's Happening (2022)
by Flork!
Every now and then, I tune into a group that is full of surprises, pleasant ones of course, with a range of diversity in their styles and playing abilities as well as originality, the type of band that forces me to ask: Where the fuck did these guys come from?
XCES is a larger than life industrial/rap/post-punk/post-metal/post apocalyptic group from somewhere in Slovakia, who have released what I gather is their second full album, at least from the info I could find on them, which is short in supply on the internet. But never mind, It’s Happening is in fact a really ‘happening’ gem of electronic samples and sequences that are combined with vocals of an amplitude deep with raw anger and pain, blended from time-to-time with heavy guitars, such as on the tracks cos'Y'R'MOAR'tan and #bork and TRANCE-END-DANCE.
This is for sure a fun album to listen to and easily addictive, and one would likely never guess that the artists were Slovak. And what I mean by this is that not only are the songs all in English (and sung extremely well without any hint of an accent), but that the music itself is so totally unique and original that you wouldn’t find anything similar elsewhere on the Slovak music scene.
Take the title track It’s Happening, for example, a masterpiece of a composition that fuses industrial electronics and heavy guitars with stark crescendos and falls, as well as both male and female vocals. How do you come up with a song like this? You either have a caffeine addiction and unattended ADHD, or, you just love what you do and take it as far as it can go. And when that’s not far enough, you press on with a track like NEHEKSVAHAKENAPA that contains loads of electro bursts and explosions and schizophrenic samples that are reminiscent of Japanese epileptic seizures.
And trust me, it’s not Nine Inch Nails or anything similar in that way. The album is full of monologues, long and short, especially by a robotic female voice with a sexy British accent, who provides us with momentary lapses of sanity, lucid moments of clarity that are cut abruptly as you are plunged into a never-ending fall towards the bottom of a bottomless pit. The whole album is like this, yet ends with Wake-up Everytime! a crunchy and eerie track that ends again with the female lovely repeating: Wake-up Everytime! You have to admit it’s genius, like being somewhere between “Wow!” and “WTF?”
For now, It’s Happening can be found on YouTube and Spotify. Let’s hope we’ll get the chance to see them live in the summer months.
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