Their second album "Serpentyne" really put a spell on me. Since I got this CD first, I didn't take it out of my CD player and that happens not THAT often I can tell. The album "Serpentyne" starts where the old album "Salt" ended. Very well played Gothic/Doom Metal partly drifting in just more or less normal Hardrock structures. This weird description of style of this band brings me to a first problem I have, writing this review: XIII seem to have such a wide variety of musical influences that it's really hard to describe the style of their songs. If this sounds to you now like they were not original, you'd be completely wrong. I really can't think of many bands I could compare to XIII (otherwise I would do so at this point now).
XIII's new one is 72 minutes long which means they used the space of a whole CD... and of course there are 13 songs on it :-) On 72 minutes they play good material without reminding the listener to other similar bands all the time. Only problem I mentioned is the fact that this CD is hard to get but anyway... XIII is a very promising new band worth checking out.
-Nudnik

They come from the high north, are mean and cruel. XIII (13) are as dark as the late Sisters Of Mercy, as hateful as Tool, and have equal sense of powerful songwriting as Life Of Agony. And the best thing about them is the constant will for self-realisation.
No bullshit, no pretentious DarkRock - mutants, just simply XIII. Black icecubes with a bloodtaste.

With a feeling of weightlessness and a sense of happiness the icelandic hardrock band XIII plays against the cold, the roughness and the loneliness of their homeland. The soundscape penetrates the ears of the listener, the lyrics are meaningful and tell stories of confusion, hallucination and the cruelty of envy. The music of the trio releases energy with simple rythms and straight forward melodies, where heavenly powers seem to be involved.

Snow and ice as far as you can see, 6 months of uninterrupted night, and the ocean all around you. A little less than 250.000 habitants of essensially scandinavian origin . A country too cold for the crows. The religious messages of The Cure, Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy seem, when you listen to the second album of XIII, reasonably represented in the Icelandic territory. Lead by Hallur Ingólfsson a drummer turned to the joys of guitar and vocals, the formation, has the tendency to be gothic. Possibly naturally caused by the melancholic isolation, particularly evident on the first track of Serpentyne, the very beautiful "Microfiction".Other influences come from Seattle as you can hear on numerous occasions, a weak influence of Soundgarden, with a small detour through The Real Thing by Faith No More (Close My Eyes with the epilogue "a la Epic", with violins at the end). The fake carelessness of certain titles, could evoke Type O Negative's October Rust whilst the chant of Ingólfsson floats somewhere between Peter Murphy (Bauhaus) and Jonas Almquist (Leather Nun) with emphasis on the fear of the void as well. The lyrics are all nicely inscribed in and on common objects (apple, candle, key chain) which Ingólfsson himself engraved. Admitting the infleunce of Chris Cornell, with an obsession for the real, symbolised on the cover as a matchbox/boat floating on wild ocean waves, permits XIII to keep their feet on the ground, rather than embark on a dark and leaniant surrealism. This will be a nice take-off.
-Manuel Rabasse

Usually you have the tendancy to define a Rockband from Iceland as having a certain unindependency and usually you can detect uncertainety. XIII seem to listen more to themselves than other bands, although "Serpentyne" smells of North America and Lumber Jacks, you can not accuse them of trying to sound like Alice In Chains or Temple Of The Dogs.
The dark image of the Icelanders does not have it's roots in their music, much more in their seriousness. No lyrics about depression or paranoia. The singer Hallur Ingólfsson looks at himself and others as real beings with tendencies, faults and visions of a no better nor worse world but as a path of our evolution. Everybody decides the colour of his own life. Nobody said that it would always be fun.
-Bernhard Klumb

Many have dabbled with hard rock here in Iceland with very uneven outcome. Serpentyne is a good album in that territory.
The metallic atmosphere suits Hallur's songwriting nicely. Therefore his songs sound more convincing than of his predecessors here in Iceland, that have often tried to make hard rock out of bad bus- and windbreaker pop anthems with a terrible outcome. The arrangements are often clever with the guitarwall raised high around them. A good mix helps to get the songs powerfully across.
-Björn Jörundur Fribjörnsson

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