Baxaxa (not to be confused with Baxaxaxa) was a black metal band from Argentina that formed in 1995, released only one demo called Erscheinungen one year later, and broke up soon after that. I thought Baxaxaxa was dreadfully boring, so let's hope Baxaxa is better.
Okay, whereas Baxaxaxa was boring, Baxaxa is just plain bad. First of all, the production is horribly inconsistent. The first song is heavily distorted while the second song is heavily muffled. Every song on the album seems to jump from one production extreme to the other. The second song also features a bunch of wind sounds, but thanks to the bad production, it sounds like one of the band members is just making whooshing noises into his microphone. It's fucking ridiculous.
The drums consist of two play styles: blasting until your arms fall off and run-of-the-mill mid-paced rhythms accompanied by a bit of double bass. There's nothing exciting to them, but they're made worse by the bad production. The snare has no impact to it and the double snare sounds more like a soft tapping. Overall, their performance is dull and lifeless.
The vocals primarily consist of a hoarse, death/thrash growl. They sound bland and uninspired. That would be bad in itself, but there are also these moments where he tries to perform clean vocals. He thought he was so clever by adding an unexpected bit of variety, but instead it sounds cheesy and incredibly out of place. There are also some really badly performed female vocals on the last song. Why? What is their purpose? I guess the band figured that if they threw enough shit at a wall then some of it would stick.
As for the guitars, they consist of malformed black metal riffs that are both uninspired and unoriginal. There are these moments when they try to perform a solo that they thought everyone would enjoy, but instead, it just sounds like he's randomly flailing on his fretboard. Don't even get me started on the stupid-ass keyboards that show up on occasion. Sometimes it sounds like they're just playing random keys, while other times they play something that sounds like it came straight out of a low-grade fantasy movie.
On top of all that, Baxaxa completely butchers “Wasted Year” by Iron Maiden. The performance is muffled as fuck, the guitars sound like distorted farts, the vocals consist of pathetic growls, and they completely flop the high-pitched screams. Also, when they try to play the guitar solo, it sounds like they have sausage fingers.
So, yeah, Baxaxa is bad. They're really bad. It's better than being boring like Baxaxaxa, though. At least I can have fun with tearing apart bad.
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