It's now time for our 208th monthly CD review at The Sault Metal Scene, and for a second straight month, we're heading to Michigan, with this month's review being of local metal solo project X's & Y's' third CD "Face The Moon, Forgive The Stars"! Posted online on January 13th in advance of a physical CD release exactly one month later, this EP features two versions of the title track along with two bonus holdover originals. A Werehold and AFR Records production, the songs here were mixed and mastered in Lansing by Mitchell "Mitch Michelle" Wells, with Jason as the only credited musician this time. X's & Y's forgone the usual streaming platform release for "FTMFTS" (Bandcamp doesn't even have the middle two songs), but the whole 20 minute EP is officially streamable on YouTube. CD copies only cost $3 USD, which is a pretty good deal, so contact Jason on social media if you want to inquire about availability eight months later! I have no idea if there are/were any physical storefronts in the EUP carrying the CDs.
Let's begin this quick review with the title and longest track, "Face The Moon, Forgive The Stars", a 7+ minute song that Jason said leaned "into doom/drone/horror territory". This is undeniably a metal song, but it really slows down with an extremely deliberate and ominous pace. A rare Jason Mills-led song with vocals (albeit just seventeen yelled words), I'm not gonna lie and tell you that this style of metal is my favourite, but it's distinct, punishing, and will be a fitting choice for inclined listeners over the Halloween season! For my tastes though, the song might be more effective if sped up in Audacity. Next is the EP's shortest song "Hand Of Cydonia", which continues the space concept, as Cydonia is a region of Mars. This song is particularly distinguished because Jason uses a tremoloa (a zither often used to replicate the sound of a Hawaiian steel guitar) as one of the included instruments, which he couldn't find other examples of in metal music.
If the droning nature of the title track wasn't your thing, you may appreciate the pounding djent riffs of this instrumental, and the tremoloa does add suitably spacey/other-worldly affect. It's still a doom metal song, but the aggression and quicker pace works better for what I like, and it would suit a sci-fi movie or TV show well! The last completely new song is "Crater", which is peppered with backwards guitar playing, including the first 30 seconds.before the full song kicks into gear. Definitely not as heavy as "Hand Of Cydonia", but it has an effectively eerie feeling and strong instrumentation, including what sounds like more tremoloa input in the background, and the last 52 seconds is just a mild harmony to keep the existing vibes going. Not a bad song at all, especially for seasonal mood music, but metalheads will take to the opening tracks more for heaviness.
The EP closes with an instrumental version of "Face The Moon, Forgive The Stars", which is the exact same song minus lyrics, and the song wasn't verbose as it was. The vocals aren't essential to appreciation of the song, but they are also a variance to its structure and pacing, so I do prefer the main version to the instrumental. Your mileage may vary! Overall, I did like X's & Y's' new EP, but for what I go for in metal, I did prefer their full-length albums "The Obsidian Dream" and "Ruination Coactive" more. It has the diversity seen on the former, including the doomy overtones and tremoloa usage, but this wasn't as fast paced and hard-hitting on average. "Hand Of Cydonia" was easily my favourite song here", but fans of AlgomA and later Woods of Ypres will want to check this for a more modern example of local doom metal. Honestly, there's so much material that Jason could have sourced for a full space concept album similarly to the Contra-themed "Ruination Coactive".
Still, my reservations are mostly of the "existing metal subgenre preference" type, and this is a good collection of songs. Here's hoping that Jason returns to the studio and works on some new X's & Y's material soon, but check out this EP above, and I hope you guys liked this month's CD review! Next month, we will return to Sault Ontario for a look at local metal trio The BAG's debut album "Sacculus", so look for that in November, and for more news and notes on the site this week! Thanks everyone!
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