Review by adhlactha on April 21, 2020.

Every four years Öxxö Xööx present new release and last year they didn’t break the tradition. Here is the album with laconic name Ÿ. French avant-garde masters returned with strong and particularly innovative material and no one expected the opposite. With such a powerful line-up (band’s members play in experimental and extraordinary band Igorrr), there’s almost hour and a half of dark and sophisticated avant-garde music.

Ÿ is full of funeral atmosphere and symphonic and epic heaviness. The doomy and melancholic aura is perfect with sad and passionate female vocals of Rïcïnn and in contrast to lead male mournful, almost operatic singing of Laurent Lunoir (Öxxö Xööx), this album creates abstract gothic ambiance, especially when they sing together. The guitar riffs are rich, but synthetic excerpts soften the sound, and emotional singing makes the music deep and meaningful. Every song is a lamentation for nature to motivate listeners to be kinder to our dying Earth. Songs change in different pace, but not accidentally or spontaneously, the change is smooth and intense at the same time. There are some passages with almost funeral doom influence, songs are kept mid tempo mostly, but not like in gothic/doom classical bands (My Dying Bride), yet there are some furious crazy moments (and Igorrr’s band Whourkr comes to mind with all their rapid aggressive frenzy).

The band again used their own fictional language (also English as well) to emphasize their originality. The fictional language sounds very harsh and creepy and that’s just one of creative features of the band. Not only their manifold music is unique, singing in strange language makes Öxxö Xööx incomparable. The use of synthesizers and samples is significant, but the metal foundation is the basic here, keyboards just add more mournful and tragic supplement, so the mood is dark and painful (like in the song 'NS2'). Songs are long, but not tiresome thanks to various mixes of changing mood (like in the song 'Döld'), competent use of vocal patterns (there are often three layers of vocal lines) and technical playing of instruments. The sound is clean without a quirk, so every instrument or singing line is clear. There are some fans, which compare the music of Öxxö Xööx with music of Devin Townsend, but only in a way that they are both too unique and are not afraid to experiment and try something new. I think Öxxö Xööx don’t float away from metal genre (like Devin used to do) so there’s no reason to compare these two. Öxxö Xööx chose their own path, and with every new album they evolve and change a little bit.

In fact, Öxxö Xööx chose very relevant problem of 21st century and describe ecological problems in their lyrics, because the planet is too contaminated to ignore them. It’s a pity, that this music is too difficult to perceive and comprehend because such unique and creative views on music shouldn't go unnoticed. Fortunately there are fans of Igorrr’s projects everywhere.

Rating: 9.1 out of 10