Band:	Oxx
Album:	The Primordial Blues
Style:	Hardcore, Math metal, Progressive metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	August 2023

01. The Coast
02. The Song Of The Rivers
03. The Fishing Village
04. The Lake And Everything Around It
05. The Haruspex
06. The Flagellant
07. The Hypostasis
08. The Primordial Blues

The latter half of 2023 has seen a sudden rush of progressive sludge metal albums. First, there was Radiant Knife and their thick, contorted riffs; then came along The Gorge, who unleashed mathy, virtuosic viciousness. Eager to not feel left out, Denmark’s Oxx has submitted their own entry in the form of The Primordial Blues.

Of the two other bands I mentioned in the intro, Oxx sound closer to The Gorge on this album; however, they take the mathcore (and at times almost jazzy) complexity to another level, while conversely upping the rowdiness and harshness of the sludge. The end result is a real assault of the senses from the trio, who welcome The Arcane Order’s Anders Mikkelsen (also Death Comes Pale and Wrath Of Belial) on bass for this fourth full-length album, their longest yet at a still-very-compact 38 minutes. Still, with such a sensory overload, it’s prudent of the band to not test listeners’ patience too much lengthwise.

The group claim to derive influence from avantgarde, free jazz, afrobeat and film score music, and compose lyrics in a stream-of-consciousness inspird by obscure media. I can’t say I ever heard afrobeat in the fabric of The Primordial Blues, but the jagged, cacophonic writing here is fitting for a lyrical approach such as this. There is a jazzy feel to the opening of the album, or at least the 20 seconds of jazz piano and hectic drumming opening “The Coast” before the first onslaught of mathcore violence. This piano is very briefly reprised when the song progresses, but any jazz influence outside of these snippets can mainly be heard on the rhythmic side, as the drums go haywire across the ever-changing, dizzying maelstrom of sound that is this opening song.

The rhythm section of Oxx deserves some mad props. The drumming all across the album is hugely impressive, and the rest of the group do excellently to stick with it. One moment that really highlighted their talent for me comes on “The Hypostasis”; after a frenetic opening that jumps rapidly from maddening guitar shredding to sludgy beatdown, the song transitions into a contorted riff, which the drums initially play a 4/4 rhythm to, but then the guitars and drums seemingly disconnect from one another as the vocals come back in, only to demonstrate how in sync with one another they are when that same contorted riff and 4/4 beat returns. It’s a microcosm of the overwhelming musical talent on display here; I thought The Gorge would be the standout instrumental ensemble of this year, but they have some real competition from Oxx on the musicianship front.

Still, complexity is admirable, but not satisfying in and of itself. On the whole, Oxx do a fine job of capitalizing on that talent to produce challenging yet engaging music. There’s quite a lot of shredding guitar leads on The Primordial Blues that are reminiscent of Mastodon’s southern rock-inspired shredding (see “The Haruspex” for some good examples), and the surrounding metal does have a bit of a Remission vibe; Mastodon were never quite this technical, but the combination of fierce, fiery sludge venom with convoluted rhythms isn’t a million miles away. The songs aren’t always mathcore-level frenetic; “The Song Of The Rivers” has a more direct drive to the rowdy sludge riffs, while “The Flagellant” teeters on the fringes of stoner rock in its closing stages.

At the same time, mathcore is a significant feature of The Primordial Blues, and moments such as the chaotic ending to the previously brooding “The Fishing Village” add an extra jolt to the senses alongside the already complex and belligerent sludge riffing. Amidst all this noise, it’s possible one might find oneself increasingly eager for some kind of reprieve, which comes in the second half of “The Lake And Everything Around It”; the song has the same mix of slow bludgeoning, jagged freneticism and instrumental pyrotechnics as the other songs, but after a prolonged trudge through murky mid-tempo dissonance, it eventually pulls back and introduces, for the first time on the album at that point, clean atmospheric guitar tones. It doesn’t last forever, as the prolonged tom build beneath these textures eventually overpowers the subtle melodic atmosphere, but it’s a change of pace that is eagerly received when it arrives.

A similar change of pace occurs on the closing title track, which at over 9 minutes long is comfortably the longest song here. It is bookended by prolonged passages featuring stringed chamber music (courtesy of several guest musicians); it’s a stark contrast to the rest of the record, and also the metallic assault lodged between these passages. I assume this is the film score influence being brought to fruition, but I can’t help feeling that it’s a bit disconnected from everything else of the record; perhaps there’s some context in the lyrics (but when the vocals are delivered in such a harsh roared style as this, it’s asking a lot for listeners to pick up on any lyrical cues), but to me it doesn’t feel like what comes before, or what lies in the middle of “The Primordial Blues”, naturally leads into such a stark contrast of sound, so it does come across a bit as being ‘different for the sake of being different’.

I also find a couple of the other songs here to be slightly challenging to click with; as much as I am awestruck by the theory of “The Hypostasis”, the actual contents of the song are a bit too cacophonic for my liking, lacking any notable grooves or moments to latch onto and break through the barrier built by the abrasive and ever-shifting sounds. Overall, I prefer The Gorge’s approach to mathy progressive sludge; nevertheless, Oxx still show on numerous occasions across The Primordial Blues that they’re more than show-off virtuosi, and are capable of delivering music that is satisfying on both a primal and intellectual level.