Where they from?
Washington, D.C. Man, what a bunch of clowns we got runnin’ the show up there, huh? Sorry, I’m trying to be a political comic who gets hired to write for Jimmy Fallon. Hey what’s the deal with this Tik Tok? It’s like Trump is trying to ban it and blah blah blah, he should ban himself! How was that? Was it too on the nose? I literally cannot put into words how much I despise the person I have become.
Why the hype?
This is kind of a BIG DEAL for Blast Worship in that Ixias is the first band we have decided to spotlight TWICE. Yeah, that’s right. I wrote about them last year after they had only released their demo (and a subsequently ‘remastered’ version of said demo which essentially was the same thing only slightly louder) and since then have released two separate recordings which have left such an impression on me that I decided to do my first double-dip in Blast Worship history.
Seriously though, this band is good. Their style, which mixes the chord progressions of Discorance Axis with some of the sonic elements of modern hyper goreblast bands like Deterioration and Sulfuric Cautery, has definitely stood out in what has so far been an overall understandably lackluster year for grind and powerviolence releases.
Latest release?
Split with Deterioration. This release, along with the split with Neckbreather from the beginning of the year, really show how this band has come into its own since the 2019. What’s really surprising is the space which the group lets songs breath, notably on opening track “Swarm,” which just allows the sonic disharmony soak in even more. The music accomplishes what all great grindcore should: It’s suffocatingly dense but still acutely clear, it’s always blistering but at no point is it ever muddied. This is just a really long way of saying THOSE FUCKING RIFFS, MAN.
