Exxûl spell your doom with pomp and spectacle on Sealed Into None.
Release date: January 15, 2026 | Productions TSO | Bandcamp
Blasphemous, unaware humanity, lo and behold your doom! The screaming tower of Exxûl has awoken, and its fell warriors march forth to wreak their divine wrath. Just when you thought 2026 was bad enough, here comes the nail to seal your coffin! MWAHAHAHAHA!
Excuse me. What I meant to say is, it’s time to review a much anticipated album of mine, the debut of Exxûl. This is a Québécois supergroup led by none other than Philippe Tougas, a wizard of metal whose resume extends across a dozen bands and every subgenre where the fans wear battle vests. He’s not one to put out a miss. The band’s story began in 2020 when he gathered three of the finest musicians in his callbook, all from his home province, to unite US power metal and epic doom metal under a new revamped banner. Under the name ‘Crestfallen’, they wrote the songs that today appear on Sealed Into None, but they couldn’t find a vocalist from Québec with the skill to match their over-the-top compositions. Then in 2024, in what the band’s Bandcamp page calls a ‘fateful meeting’, they found Thomas Karam, vocalist and guitarist of power proggers Noor, whose operatic wailing capacity at last fit the bill for Exxûl to manifest. Starting last June, the band put out several demos of rehearsals and live shows, and they arrived on January 15th with their debut full-length.
Everything about Exxûl is geared to achieve maximum epic fantasy showmanship. Each member of the band has a stage name that sounds like a character class in a role-playing game. The band name itself refers to an evil, foreboding tower in a fantasy world of Tougas’ imagining, a war-torn setting whose lore he has developed across multiple of his other bands. Every full-length song spins a story from this world into as epic a composition as possible, suffused with theatrics and technical brilliance. One minute it’s stately doom metal riffs, then it’s Karam (aptly nick-named Stargazer) bellowing a Homeric tale of tragedy and strife. If you happen to follow the lyrics while listening, it’s like reading The Odyssey, except every stanza ends with a guitar solo. Tougas, appearing as ‘Defender’, graces the album with no less than 18 of them, and Antoine Daigneault (Sentinel) on bass often joins the fray. You’ll even catch them just by reading the lyrics alone, because they are all marked and given lore-based names. Suffice it to say that there’s enough sauce in this album to get thoroughly lost, but if you’ve come for spectacle, you’ll surely find it.
The songs on Sealed Into None are more than just guitar solos dispersed by WOAHs and YEAHs however. Each piece unfolds in accordance with its narrative, and the flashy instrumental passages mark its emotional peaks (this is why the solos have lore-based names). The best example has to be the closer, “The Screaming Tower”. At 14 minutes, it takes the silver medal for longest song about a tragic seafaring voyage I’ve heard, clearing Iron Maiden’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and trailing only Symphony X’s “The Odyssey”. It follows a crew of 45 as they travel to the Exxûl in search of glory, and of course find their horrific demise. From their voyage’s onset to their arrival at the tower, slow, imposing guitar sets the stage for Karam to depict their gallant bravery. When the sailors encounter the Exxûl, and its screaming voices begin to drive them mad, guitar and bass solos imitate their struggle. Rollicking USPM kicks in as the sailors succumb to deadly insanity, and the rest of the song is a rush of riffs and theatrics as they perish. The only repeated part comes at the end, when the opening riff returns and Karam closes the song just as it began. Everything might be over the top, but it all corresponds with the vision of the piece, and the rest of the album has a similar intentionality, which makes each listen more rewarding.
Despite the extravagance and pomp of Sealed Into None, it also remains faithful to its inspirations of epic doom and US power metal. Tougas and the rest truly know ball, and can reproduce either style in an authentic way as they see fit. Each song has moments that could come straight out of a Solitude Aeternus or Candlemass song, and the same is true for Running Wild or Manowar. What makes Exxûl distinct, however, are the points that blur both together. Most of the album feels like an especially dark breed of power metal, one with plenty of amped-up speed and theatrics, but laced in the sinister atmosphere and density of doom. On top of this, the accessible production, shredding, and Karam’s operatic abilities bring a clarity to the album that feels more like European power metal. It brings me back to such virtuosic groups as Rhapsody of Fire, Gamma Ray, or Angra. All this is to say that Exxûl turns several sounds into one, almost like a new style of its own. Prophecy metal? Anyone? Anyway, when I first heard of their status as a ‘power-doom’ band, I had trouble imagining what that could possibly sound like, so I’m glad to see their influences coexisting so naturally here.
In the grand scheme of modern power metal, Sealed Into None stands as a rare example of innovation. Without crossing over into gimmick territory, it melds multiple styles together while preserving the true epic fantasy feel that the genre must have. It’s hard for me to name other albums that have done that recently. It’s also got all the classic metal cred you could ask for (I didn’t even mention that Andrew Lee, the incarnation of metal purism, handled the mixing and mastering). The album does threaten to collapse under its own weight at times, but the commitment to its vision is undeniable, and I’m definitely looking forward to what Exxûl does next. In the meantime, we already have the next Worm album from Tougas, and there’s a strong chance of more Zeicrydeus later this year. All aboard the Productions TSO train folks.
Band photo taken from RockHard Magazine
