This is a weird time to be involved with music; it demands we all be content creators, influencers, amateur marketers, compulsive oversharers, and, when we have time, musicians. All the songs now come pre-packaged with personalities, branding, carefully manicured online identities detailing everything the artist had for breakfast and their subsequent thoughts and feelings and so there’s something almost punk rock about X-ANONYMOUS.
It’s not that they’re anonymous; plenty of bands have done the mask thing before. There’s a ridiculous history in rock music of musicians masquerading as comic book villains – it’s the anonymity here that serves a purpose. Their whole project is driven by issues of identity, control, perception, and the unnerving modern feeling that the world is trying to force us into pre-approved roles. Enter “CLAIM IT ALL.”
The song, from their latest, MASKED EXISTENCE, Vol. 3, opens as one might expect given its title; loud, aggressive and sounding like a machine slowly waking with malice aforethought.
Crushing riffs are set against an industrial soundscape where the atmosphere is constantly on the edge of collapse. It’s heavy, for sure, but not in the way that many metalcore bands often rely on pure volume to compensate for a lack of any genuine personality. It’s more structured and more meaningful than that.
The song touches on themes of being psychically imprisoned and reclaiming your own mind. They sound like things that might end up as subjects in some thesis or a frightening self-help journal. But this sounds a lot more accessible than that; “CLAIM IT ALL” is essentially an anthem of rebellion.
Basically “CLAIM IT ALL” is about fighting back, not at governments or villains but at the pressure being put on you. It’s a battle to take ownership of yourself back when the world seems intent on telling you who you’re meant to be. X-ANONYMOUS translates this into a suffocating metalcore and industrial rock blend. Massive riffs are combined with a mechanical aesthetic and an overwhelming sense of pressure; it’s the kind of struggle that, unlike many others in this genre, feels entirely internalized and that is why it is much more effective.
What sets “CLAIM IT ALL” apart from other powerful rebellious anthems of late is that this isn’t really a song about overthrowing a corrupt government, or burning anything down: It’s about owning your own mind. The battleground here is psychological.
I guess the whole experience reflects the band’s slightly peculiar development. When the primary writer of the band works as a neuroscience researcher, you’re not likely to get an entirely superficial perspective on things like consciousness, perception, identity or, even worse, meaning. But it seems like their approach is actually fundamental to what they do musically.
The result is something that delivers all the great elements of modern metalcore (brutal riffs, industrialized atmospheric dread, explosive force) with the substance and thematic weight to actually mean something beyond pure sonic catharsis. X-ANONYMOUS couldn’t have picked a better title than “CLAIM IT ALL”; they absolutely do.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
