Exxasens
Polaris

Treat yourself to 48 minutes in space, while keeping your butt firmly planted on Earth.

Imagine any post-rock band that has emerged in recent years and focus on the beautiful soundscapes they can create, you know, those mega-trips in your mind when you hit the play button. But now (and here’s the fun part) absolutely forget the velvety guitars, a bit cheesy if you will, à-la Explosions In The Sky. Now, just replace them with a powerful sound, a sonic mixture of ultra-effected guitars illuminated by fluorescent neon lights, nu-metal style drums equipped with a double pedal, and electronic inserts here and there. Post-metal, to put it briefly. But the description was necessary because it’s a rather vague genre with many facets.

Exxasens is the name of a one-man band from Barcelona City, and this "Polaris," his first work, is an album pulsating with life, a bit pompous but never excessively dreamlike and wistful precisely because of the metal attitude: the leitmotif of the entire work seems to be an interstellar journey to the red planet, something that the artwork and melodies certainly emphasize. It’s hard to single out any track that’s more original than the others, often, unfortunately, the combination of "post (rock or metal)" and "instrumental" undermines the variety of the work; "Mira Mama" is the one that most approaches the canonical song form, the only one that also features singing in Spanish which (to my surprise) doesn’t entirely clash with the album's atmosphere. It’s all about the feeling, for me "Spiders On The Moon" and "Milk Stars" are the tracks that best summarize the essence of the album, epic rides on a white steed while wearing a cumbersome space suit (a somewhat gruesome image, I know).

One warning: pace your listening with a dropper: on the first listen, I felt like a child who had just gotten the toy he’d been longing for years, but once the listening is over, so too is the enthusiasm and the urge to listen to it again immediately. I hope this daring Spaniard can refine his style in a future album.