THE XENON CODEX

Having enjoyed a fairly stable lineup (by their standards) for a few years was clearly beneficial to Hawkwind when they went into the studio to record The Xenon Codex, because whilst it is still a long way from the standards of their top-rank albums it was their strongest studio effort since Levitation. With a particularly effective opening number - The War I Survived - the tracks on the album do an excellent job of combining the classic Hawkwind sound with a few of the metal-influenced riffs they'd been dabbling with in the 1980s as well as some influences from the electronic experiments of Church of Hawkwind, and overall the album continues the journey of the good ship Hawkwind in fine form.