New album “The Primordial Blues” out on August 18th!
Aarhus, Denmark-based avant/technical metallic hardcore outfit OXX returns with the band’s fourth album, The Primordial Blues, confirmed for August release on Nefarious Industries.
OXX sounds like getting blackout drunk and beating yourself to death with a Thomas Pynchon door stopper. Formed in 2012 by guitarist/vocalist/lyricist Alex Bossen and drummer Martin Aagard, the group has since released three full-length albums and one EP. Following the 2019 release of their third album, The Skeleton Is Just A Coat Hanger; These Are The Black Strings That Make You Dance, OXX was able to bring their glorious belligerence to US audiences for the first time with a sprawling month-long trek. In November of 2022, the band joined Cleric on a two-week tour through parts of Europe, and in early 2023 they welcomed new bassist Anders Frodo S. Mikkelsen.
OXX’s The Primordial Blues is a monument to misery and a harbinger of perpetual sadness. The album was recorded by the band, mixed by Klaus Q Hedegaard Nielsen, mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege (Obituary, Full Of Hell, Eyes), and completed with artwork by Aske A Hvidtfeldt and layout by Greg Meisenberg. The record also features guest contributions of violin/viola from Kristine Kier, cello from Emalia Slusarczyk, double bass from Adrian Christensen, and piano from Esben Tjalve.
Born out of the Danish punk/metal scene, OXX has since grown into a feral beast of its own by weaving elements of avant/free music, afrobeat, and film scoring into its compositions. The band’s raw and spontaneous blend of chaotic hardcore, sludge, and crust acts as an extension of the lyrics; an unfiltered, feverish stream of thought – bits and pieces of novels, obscure cinema, video games, and more, rushing by in a maelstrom of impressions of existence filtered through the eyes of the woefully unstable.
Citing influences that range from the literary devices of Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov to the works of avant-garde composer Marc Ducret and Brownsville rappers Ka and Sean Price, Bossen explores the ramifications of severe mental illness and the way it permeates our perception of every phenomenon around us, elaborating, “As your tools of perception become irrevocably twisted, your surroundings twist with them. Your home and your hometown become reflections and reminders of your own insanity.” Translating this bedlam into musical arrangements, each composition on The Primordial Blues interprets a shared set of riffs and motifs scattered across the album, building off one another to outline a labyrinthine structure constantly referencing yet never resembling itself.
(Photograph by Rolf Meldgaard)
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