ALBUM REVIEW
X-POZED - A Cure For Worse
Metalcore aggression meets sharper melodic instincts.
X-POZED's return following 2012's "Essence Of Hope" should not be viewed simply as a second album arriving after a long hiatus. The West Flanders band's comeback with its original line-up, its 2024 Alcatraz Bash victory and the live momentum that followed turn "A Cure For Worse" into something more than a continuation of a story left behind: it is a record built from the ground up once again. Emerging after a fourteen-year gap, this ten-track release retains the band's blend of metalcore, hardcore and nu-metal while reshaping it through a tighter songwriting approach.
Rhythm guitars form the backbone of the album. The riffs are sharp and direct, while the groove-driven rhythm section creates weight not merely through distortion, but through the placement of the hits and the physical pressure generated by the breakdowns. As 'The Martyr / The Symptom' hardens after its melodic guitar intro, that transition also reveals the album's fundamental approach: melody and aggression are not treated as alternatives, but as different functions within the same song. The line between Killswitch Engage's melodic metalcore approach and the hardcore weight of Hatebreed and Pro-Pain becomes particularly clear here, while the groove and heft associated with Gojira remain an audible reference point, especially in the rhythmic structures.
One of X-POZED's most significant songwriting achievements is keeping this formula from becoming monotonous across the album. While 'Back Down' represents a more direct and aggressive metalcore template, the brief guitar solo at the end of 'No Tolerance' unexpectedly opens the song's riff-driven framework toward classic heavy metal melody. Likewise, the vocal variations in 'Through Suffering' create dynamic contrast rather than simply increasing the track's rhythmic intensity through greater heaviness. These small deviations broaden the album's musical scope, particularly by preventing the guitars from becoming little more than tools for supporting the breakdowns.
The vocal approach is another of the most prominent elements connecting X-POZED's past with its present. Jeroen Berton's harsh vocals preserve the album's hardcore core, while the clean passages produce different results depending on how they are integrated into each song. The more melodic vocal approach on 'Forgiveness', combined with Fleur Van Zuilen's guest vocals, shifts the album away from its anger-centered expression into more emotional territory. That said, it is difficult to argue that the clean vocals sit equally naturally everywhere. The prominence of the harsh vocals in the mix also creates an intensity that can become fatiguing over longer listening sessions. The production generally carries the guitars, rhythm section and vocals with clarity, but the raw character of the vocals occasionally pushes ahead of that balance.
The album's real surprise, however, is 'The Moment'. The rap vocals at the beginning bring its Linkin Park-style nu-metal influence into sharper focus before quickly locking into a strong melodic hook. At under two minutes, the song feels more like an interlude than a fully developed album track, but that also reveals an important possibility. While X-POZED's core metalcore/hardcore framework is already firmly established, this more melodic and rhythmic side of its nu-metal influence adds another dimension to the band's sound. This is precisely where one of the most interesting aspects of "A Cure For Worse" emerges: the moments when the band moves in different directions matter not because they abandon their core formula, but because they demonstrate that they are capable of stepping outside it.
Thematically, the album's songs also do not feel like disconnected bursts of anger. Betrayal, psychological pressure, toxic cycles, revenge, forgiveness, the search for support and the desire for better days prevent the album's darkness from being confined to a single emotional register. 'Back Down' represents resistance, 'Forgiveness' explores the possibility of moving beyond inflicted damage without denying it, while closing track 'Better Days' embodies the decision to look ahead rather than offering a definitive resolution. In this way, the album's heaviness ceases to be an end in itself; anger becomes a musical expression of survival and recovery.
Some of the songs on "A Cure For Worse" could have taken greater risks. In particular, developing the nu-metal direction opened up by 'The Moment' across longer and more substantial compositions could give X-POZED another way to distinguish itself without weakening its existing identity. The clean vocals can likewise be effective when used in the right places, but they do not always produce the same organic result when brought into contact with the album's harsher core. Even so, the ten-track structure leaves little room for unnecessary extension, and its roughly half-hour runtime allows the album to put its ideas across directly.
For that reason, "A Cure For Worse" should not be read merely as a comeback record following a long silence. X-POZED does more than recreate the metalcore/hardcore/nu-metal blend of its early period, updating it with tighter riffs, more controlled dynamics and melodic detail. Its strongest quality lies in its refusal to confine familiar genre tools to an entirely safe territory. There are still clearly directions for the band to explore, with the approach taken on 'The Moment' being perhaps the clearest indication. Ultimately, "A Cure For Worse" makes its mark not as the record of a band looking back after fourteen years away, but as the work of a band reworking the material of its past and beginning to look forward.
