The Los Angeles California five piece, infamous for their deliriously heavy hardcore death metal, are proving once again that their colossal clout outweighs the sum of their contemporaries. Tierra Y Libertad finds Xibalba in their most threatening form yet, forcibly colliding elite 90s death metal with reckless down-tuned doom tones and fist-swinging beatdowns which slam harder than a head-on collision. The breakdown, once stigmatised but now a crucial signifier of a savage new breed in extreme metal, has become Xibalba’s crippling modus operandi, refined over the course of their career and reimagined as a new terrifying beast, creating a nefarious intensity on Tierra Y Libertad usually only reserved for majestic black metal, transcendental doom and post-metal, but here hewn from furious violence.
