From Bandcamp, "USA Progressive/Technical Death Metal XENOSIS have been at it for years, honing their craft with each album and showcasing a flair for experimentation too. On their fifth full-length album, "Hermetic Transmutation," they retain their core sound as they elaborate on both the progressive and technical aspects, even borrowing elements of brutal death metal and dissonant death metal to achieve that. The influences are finely integrated into their ever throbbing, busy music, never seeming forced and instead adding meaningful variation to their intense sound. The music's persistent groove belies its highly intricate quality; there's just so much happening while you're busy bobbing your head, tapping your feet, or rolling on the floor. After years of toiling, XENOSIS have created a delightfully engrossing album that is bound to confound, tantalize, and ultimately satiate fans of this kind of music."

"Sentient Shapes" is first, and it stenches of the heavy, filthy weight of Death Metal. There are some lead harmonies that pepper the sound, but their dissonance is purposefully not in the same key as the music. Technically, these guys are wizards…the meter shifts are off the chart and too many to count. "Prolapsed Twin Entombment" is another cold, sterile offering. The music is so bleak and cold, it would be akin to putting your hand into liquid nitrogen. It will burn you before you even feel it. Leads breaks are short, accented, and pig squealed at times. "Spore Whore" is another densely packed song. In fact, it's so dense, I can see if running past just a few minutes. The band however has other ideas in mind, as this song extends to seven minutes of run time. There are spritely moments in the song as well, but I believe they are tongue-in-cheek.

"Engravings for Dyslexic Clairvoyants" is a short, one-minute reprieve from the early chaos…just enough time for you to draw a breath. "Rapid Metamorphosis" is another bossy and lengthy song that takes aggression to new heights. The technical side of the band is on full display, from the way they dip above and under hazards while Gary keeps an impossible sense of timing on the kit, but the music is just sterile. "Sea of Teeth" is devastatingly crushing in terms of its presence. For me, it sounds like a machine that seems erratic but is capable of performing seemingly impossible tasks in repetition. "Altar of the Hound" has a dreadful stench of disease and death, and it fills the air for miles around. Advanced guitar pyro is also a part of their sound, and you can really pick up on them here. The bass work is outstanding as well.

"No Longer Human" is the final song, and it's a cacophony of various sounds that are shoved into a blender and put on high. Overall, the album beats you over your head with a steel boot and doesn't stop after you are bleeding. They have the technical chops, that is for sure, and although the sound is largely dissonant and sterile, their sense of timing is immaculate.