Xoo- Poison in the Name of Beauty
(MG-Xoo1)
From Aural Innovations #38 (Jan 2008)
Xoo are a new UK Hawkwind inspired band lead by guitar player Kevin Perry
(who also plays in the Hawkwind cover band Assassins of Silence. The CD-R (it
is a real CD, they were just not ready when I got my copy) features 9 tracks,
some of which are instrumental. They lyrics are mostly about quite socially
concise and interesting subject matter, despite, some of the choruses being
sung just too many times in a few of the songs.
The CD begins with Call of the Profit, a highly Huw Lloyd Langton style Hawkwind
influenced instrumental track. Song of the Sandman is next and starts with a
spoken word piece before and is a nice melodic track that would have fit nicely
on the Hawkwind Xenon Codex record. She Ghost in the Machine starts with a woman
speaking and then heads into the most catchy track on the CD.. Poison in the
name of Beauty is quite nice melodic and spacey instrumental track with a prominent
bass line that builds up the track nicely. Dark Matter
features both singers and again a very melodic and spacey track and Queen of
Angels features some beautiful guitar playing, while both songs remind me of
Darxtar. Merchant of Venus starts off a lot like Assassins of Allah but then
goes into a different direction and is again quite melodic and almost poppy…
SETI begins with some electronic sequences and the guitar slowly layers in.
This is one of the tracks where the chorus is repeated a bit too much for me.
The CD ends with Beauty, a short 2min electronic piece. Not a bad debut but
not very original. A bit too much sounding like later 80’s Hawkwind. Some
really nice tracks though..
Check out the band web site at: http://www.alien8.co.uk
Reviewed by Scott Heller