Song Review:: xikers: ROUTE ZERO : The CALLING- DIENAMITE

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  • Release date: 2026 November 02
  • Album tracklist: DIENAMITE, Go, Mask off, One, DUMB, Sanctuary
  • Album runtime: 18 minutes

 I always find it mildly amusing how many of their songs and albums are in full caps while their group name has none. Anyway, my favorite fifth gen group is coming to us with another mini album, this one in Halloween colors for the album artwork, and I'm hoping desperately we get another Witch situation where I just adore the entire album beyond any words. Y'all remember Witch, right? How I never shut up about it? Fingers crossed.

Stunning. This is wonderful. It's like the rock version of a haunted carnival in this instrumental. Mental note to include it in next year's Halloween post. This is dark and heavy and grindy in the best way, and then just when it starts to be a little bit too much, it just stops, not for long, but long enough to let it have a moment to rest a touch before launching forward again. And then when the electric guitar starts up? The entire song changes from grungy to, well, electric. 

They're so close to giving me the vocals I want. I just need a ballad. Or something very jazzy. Something to really show off their vocals and the vibratos that the entire group has, even the rappers. The vocal effects are very fitting for the song, even though that's never been my favorite thing to have come up in songs, but we also hear some ad-libs there at the end. And the "One, two, three, boom" said so quietly at the end and the cutoff with the haunted child singing after all that high-octane energy is fascinating.

This is going to be an incredible live stage. Alright. Let's ignore my smashing of the big, red "turn the chair" button for this music and let's address that we've got lore, we've got heavy Halloween visuals, and we've got a Godzilla sized skeleton that turns into the lead singer from No Brain absolutely shredding an equally large electric guitar. I don't know who at KQ comes up with the ideas for the xikers music videos, whether that's staff or one or more of the members, but goodness this is incredible.

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