Eximperitus play metal shaman on their new album, guiding us in the search for personal growth across realms with a technical death metal ritual.
Release date: January 30, 2026 | Willowtip Records | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp
Warning y’all right now, much of this review’s word count will be made up of overly long names and titles. May seem annoying to most, but commitment to the bit, craft, or art can be a wonderful thing, even if it’s at the expense of character limits and writers’ patience. I’m no slouch though so I’m definitely that guy who’s built different (badly) that’s gonna tell you that today we’re talking about a band named Eximperituserqethhzebibšiptugakkathšulweliarzaxułum (or, thankfully, Eximperitus for short), a turbo bastard of a word made up of Latin, ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, and Sumerian language elements with the purpose of ‘reveal[ing] the unutterable name of the antiuniverse‘.
This Belarusian band have been tormenting weak-ass MFs with their name for close to 15 years now. I believe I found them through a MetalSucks or some such other site’s article of coverage and originally went ‘all right, man‘ when seeing the name, but what was undisputable was their compelling somewhat-blackened death metal, technicalified to levels I was starting to get more familiar with beyond Wormed and other hitters. As someone that really loved bands like Behemoth and Dark Funeral around the time of Eximperitus‘ breakthrough 2016 debut album – the name of which I won’t publish here as my only mercy to you, the reader, but you can see it here – they were different enough to spur interest even with the esotericism turned up beyond what I liked then or even now really.
Good thing that you don’t really have to be as committed to that stuff as Eximperitus are to enjoy the music. First and foremost, as far as the art is concerned, they are musicians – they understand the craft, and their writing and execution shows it. Over time, especially since their second album, Šahrartu, they’ve honed their melodic sensibilities and approachability – you know, relatively speaking anyway. Meritoriousness of Equanimity is a bit of an apex for the band in that regard, further ensconcing their music with subtle Egyptian melodies and Arabic-type scales that tickle me in just about any context. Think Nile, but with more cosmic and mystic theming than Kemetism and Egyptian history. The album is also oddly uplifting.
Unlike nearly every damn song title here, this album is a quick, economical listen (an Eximperitus tradition) with a lot of speed and attention paid to the details. You get metal slammers like the intro “One Step Long Infinity” that hammers the tone into your forehead (or fivehead, we don’t judge, Jimmy Neutron was a cool show) with big boy drumming, pumice stone-gargling vocals, and viciously agile guitars. It leads cleanly and expertly into “Contemplation of the Plastic Fibers of Perfection at the Second Level of Reality” which genuinely feels like a continuation of the track before it, but has more prominent (and slower) melody to begin with and more fleshed-out measures throughout. Between these two songs, you get a strong idea of what Eximperitus are going for here, but that’s not all they have to offer.
I feel it’s a disservice to run with these sorts of themes and sonic approaches and not devote some of your airtime to ambience to enhance the mood. Eximperitus do just that with key moments on the album, one of the biggest (and best) of which is the album’s first of two instrumental interludes, *takes deep breath* “Twelve Centuries of Triumph of the Third Kingdom: the Idea of the Inner Creation of the Aristocratic Character of the Leader and the Process of Tempering Him in the Crucible of Trials in the Face of the Exaltation of Life as an Ode to the Heroic Ideals of Future Civilizations”. You may be groaning at the breadth of that title, but it’s a banger, a full story synopsis in a track title. Best of all, it makes sense! The name evokes hard-won peace at the hands of superior strength and resolve – likewise, the music is calmly contemplative and triumphant, echoing through regal halls of splendor and your two-bedroom apartment alike.
“Finding Consistency in the Fourth Quadrant of Eternity” exacts on the slower tones that the second track played with, but this time with more accoutrements like clean vocals (which I don’t remember Eximperitus employing before). Later on though, if you like it rough, “Chalkionic Wandering Among the Wreckage of the Future” capitalizes on Eximperitus‘ more brutal origins with a chest-kicker of a track with machine gun drums and some vile fretwork that’s timeless. You’ve heard it before, sure, but it feels exacting here toward the end of Meritoriousness of Equanimity, like the whole album was building to it and it’s not even the finale. It’s still more varied than previous work with time and experience put in to glance past the expected and tropes to something that gleans fun and power from the tenets of technical death metal still – not an easy task these days.
For that matter, the whole album does. I’ve probably talked about how sterile some progressive and technical death metal can be sometimes, especially the more pristinely produced material, and while Meritoriousness of Equanimity does sound pretty clean, it still maintains a sharp edge and cavernous hole in its soul to suck you in – take that however you will. The bottom line for me is Eximperitus feel refreshed after taking five years away to toil through the realms and come back to ours ready to deliver cryptic sermons of ascension that defy our corporeal world, though maybe not the spiritual. I have no doubt this stuff speaks to someone out there on a much deeper level than I am accustomed to, but I’m very happy with the music itself and Eximperitus pushing themselves further than before. Great band, great album, it’s a balm on the chapped ass of 2026 so far, and may it carry us toward a righteousness that will be demanded of all us decent people.
