Review by JD on November 15, 2011.

The advancement of North America’s metal scene is opening the world’s eyes to the brute power of the music. All forms of metal are being represented, showing our blue-green living marble that they still can rock. One prime example is Ohio based Skeletonwitch - one breed of metal that is taking the global metal scene by force.

This band is made of many parts, and blended perfectly. You have parts of Scandinavian Black and Death metal, straight ahead Thrash in the Bay Area style and lots of classic NWOBHM era bands - the result is a band that has a perfect balance between having serious heaviness, mind melting speed, virtuosic melody and shitloads of pure attitude- not the smug selfish kind, it’s the kind that is simply humble yet well earned.

So many songs over the course of this album are so perfectly crafted and masterfully executed with such aggressive perfection, I could not pick one song to showcase, or even one to critique in my normal hard assed way. The album is so well produced with fully realized songs that are smart, impassioning and boldly malicious as every single note and beat cuts straight into one’s very soul.

I have heard every album now... and this is one of the few bands that never really made a ‘bad’ album, while maturing into a well respected band. This album is the best of the entire Skeletonwitch catalogue, showing how creativity in metal has not been lost, but always had been there - and they are at the forefront showing off that North American metal is in a league of it own and is overshadowed by no one.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship:10
Atmosphere: 9.5
Production: 9
Originality: 9
Overall: 9.5

Rating: 9.4 out of 10

Review by Michael on June 9, 2024.

Filthgrinder is the debut of the Italian-based band Xenos which was released back in 2020. And that debut is quite a good start for the guys. Although the sound is a little bit tinny and unbalanced it is quite interesting to see the way they offer their music and you can clearly see in which direction the guys want to go. On the other hand the raw sound matches quite well to this music because it gives it some kind of 80s flair.

Here and there you'll find some more straight-in-the-face thrash metal and sometimes the whole thing is more technical. Summed up came out a highly interesting mixture that still left some space to evolve for the band but for sure shows up that this band is kind of a hidden gem in the scene. The intro 'Soldados' pretends some balladesque, slight mediterranean tendencies in the music but with the title track you soon find out that there is more thrash than anything else to find here. This one is offering some really solid thrash stuff in the vein of old Megadeth with some more groovy elements. The drums and Ignazios vocals especially sound very powerful and the technical guitar riffs are nice to hear. 'Birth Of A Tyrant' goes more into the Slayer direction back when they did “Seasons In The Abyss”. The pace reminds much of “Mandatory Suicide” (also the lyrics). But again, in the Xenos´ music there are much more groovy parts to find. What I personally really like are the tempo changes in the song and the short guitar riffs after each verse. This one turned out to be a cool banger and one of my favorite ones on the album. 'Iconoclast' shows a more melodic side of the band where they almost start like a very well-known NWoBHM band that unfortunately released two very long and mediocre albums the last few years (although Per from Hellbutcher has a totally different opinion about that). In that song you can hear again that old Megadeth had a huge influence on the guys (try to find out which riff I mean). So it is kind of self-explaining that they covered their heroes. “Peace Sells…But Who´s Buying” has become a very close version to the original. I personally am totally fine with that because when I think about some cover versions where it's enough to roll my toes curl, I really prefer no experiments.
And finally they increase speed for the grand finale 'Of Magma And War'. Ignazio is screaming out his lungs here like Tom Araya did and this one turned out to be a real thrash inferno. Hypnotic and repetitive riffs in the song make this one to another really good one to bang to and once again, talking about the guitar riffs, you can see the skills of Guiseppe very clearly and with that the opportunity the band has in the future.

The only small point of criticism is that, apart from all the aggressiveness in Ignazios voice, his range is a little bit limited because he is singing mostly in the same pitch. Some more higher or lower tunes would maybe stress out his words a little bit more. If you know the Swedes from My Regime you probably know what I mean.

But all in all came out a really good debut and with The Dawn Of Ares which was released just one year later they went on a step further. Check them out, you won't do anything wrong with that.

Rating: 8.2 out of 10