OVERVIEW
XERATH ARE A NEW CUTTING EDGE BAND COMBINING CRUSHING MESHUGGAH STYLE RIFFS WITH EPIC ORCHESTRAL COMPOSITION.
Their sound can be described as taking influence from Strapping young lad, Meshuggah and Dimmu Borgir to create a distinctive sound they call "orchestral groove metal" (or chug-score!) The band was formed in 2007 by guitarist Andy Phillips, drummer Michael Pitman, bassist Owain Williams, and later joined by Richard Thomson on vocals. Originally started as an experiment to combine film-score with syncopated guitar rhythms, and just a year later a fully formed gigging band with a clear direction. Xerath aim to carve a long and relentless career on the cutting edge of technical symphonic groove metal. Terrorizer magazine had this to say about the band: "Emerging from a fierce competition of no-nonsense death/thrash/black metal battery, Basingstoke's Xerath eclipsed them all by a long shadow indeed to win 2008's Fear Candy Unsigned bout with that rarest of qualities; originality. Emphatically underlining the 'progressive' in 'progressive metal', Xerath uncage slick tech-metal polyrhythms, soaring songwriting ambition and pull it all seamlessly together with the lightness of touch normally found in expensive music academies full of varnished wood. These are genre-violating extreme metal soundtracks to inspire real awe."