It's funny that California's Xibalba subtitled their new EP "adios", as I could swear I read a year or so ago that they were breaking up… although a quick Google search confirms absolutely no such thing, so that's my bad. Either way, Xibalba have been perpetrating an intoxicating blend of sped-up doom, hashed out stoner rock and pummeling sludge for a full decade as of this year, with their second effort, Hasta La Muerte, even making my year-end top 10 list back in 2012. Their follow up, 2015's Tierra y Libertad, was just OK in my book… not an embarrassing effort by any means, but rather a slightly less scintillating, definitely less fired up album than its predecessor.
It was hardly bad enough to make me root for a break up, though, so I'm glad to find out that I must have been thinking of some other band (or just making shit up in my head, which happens). Two years after Tierra, Xibalba return with a brief – as in 10 minutes brief – EP in the form of the three-track Diablo, Con Amor… Adios. There are an equal number of varying flavors here, from the uptempo stoner doom of "Diablo" to the faster, death-metal inflected "Con Amor" to the accessible sludge/doom of "Adios".
Taken as a consistent whole these songs are leaner and more engaging than I found Tierra to be over the course of 43 minutes, but all in all there isn't enough meat on these bones to consider it a proper about face. If the band can work up an album's worth of material at this quality, though, now we're talking.
Score: 7.5/10 (probably a solid 8 if not for sheer brevity)
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AzRIukUrcY[/youtube]
