Skip to main content

Hexis – XII

Hexis – XII

Hexis have been impressing me ever since Abalam back in 2014. Their splits with This Gift is a Curse (2015) and Primitive Man (2015) introduced me to both of those bands, and they've always been part of the best in the catastrophic, dissonant blackened scenes.

XII is similar to previous albums, with their classic suffocating sound of tremolo-picked pieces of hatred and despair staying untouched. That being said, there are some slightly heavier elements, as well as slightly more focussed songwriting which help XII stand out.

Hexis has the habit of writing very short songs, but quite a few of them – it almost feels as if they divided their albums into chapters rather than wrote individual pieces. Everything flows, there are no breaks or interludes – it's a grindcore-esque approach to black metal, except with actual continuity between songs. By doing this, they turn their albums into dense, impenetrable slabs of hatred in which one must either dive and abandon control, or avoid altogether.

The album feels like it was written as one long entity, and has the dynamics to back that up. Stop/start rythms, pummeling introductions running straight into walls of cold anger, floating zeniths of relative peace and deep caverns of uncomfortable heaviness – XII has everything to keep you occupied during its entire duration. It's actually tiring to keep up with everthing, given how goddamn punishing each indidual section is.


The drums have a clearer sound than they did in previous records, which actually changes the general feel quite a bit – instead of our old subwoofer kicks and comfortable blasts giving the whole experience a more ritualistic aspect, we've got well-produced bass drums and cymbals. XII feels like Hexis have stopped dancing around the fire and actually started torturing people.



Giuseppe Fitzsimmons
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Grime - Live

Grime Live – Oct. 2017 The air is heavy, the lights are dim, and the conversations skittle away, hiding in the corners as Grime takes to the stage. Eyes up and hair down, I knew we were in for something good. Grime, the italian sludge act, released their first album in 2013 on the well-known Mordgrimm records. They might be the best-named band I can think of – the unclean buzz of the strings and damp mix of instruments give off a filthy, pock-marked sound, the kind you'd hear from scraping a sewer floor. I didn't know of them until their 2015 record, Circle of Molesters, but they're the kind of band who can do no wrong. The first note hit, and the bass shook me in unholy ways. After staggering a few steps back, I looked up at the stage and saw some of the best lighting since Messuggah. A white backdrop, searchlight-style movement carving the silhouettes of Grime into my retina. Marco, lead guitar, was spectacular in his theatrics. Doubling over in rage and p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Uboa, the interview

UG You’ve gone over the “Jouissance” title in the past. Would you mind going over Coma Wall? It’s got quite grave and final undertones. First, Coma Wall has no totalised meaning for me, but death of the author could suggest otherwise. But there are themes. The Coma Wall, also known as the CfA2 Great Wall, is a galactic filament - thread-like structures composed millions of galaxies - of and one of the largest structures in the observable universe. It’s 750 million ly high x 200 million ly in width x 16 million ly in thickness. There are few structures bigger than it before you get to the “End of Greatness”, where the universe no longer is seen in discernible structures (filaments and voids, which combined look awfully organic, almost like clusters of interconnected neurones) and you get undifferentiated noise, like static on a TV or white noise. Basically, in cosmology, there seems to be an upper limit to how big things get before the universe seems to become pure undifferentia...
Post a Comment
Read more

Analepsy – Atrocities from Beyond

When I say slam, people usually think of the Russian scene, often citing ultra-heavyweights Abominable Putridity. Well, it turns out Portugal is also amazing at mid-tempo grooving. Their first release, Dehumanization by Supremacy, was an exceptional debut from any point of view. The production was spot-on, the songs had great flow, and the slams were goddamn heavy. The vocals were arguably the least impressive, mainly because there was so little variety – which is something given that we’re talking about brutal death metal here. On Atrocities from Beyond, the man behind the mic is replaced by the lead guitarist, Diogo Santana, and this man’s range is far superior – there are some nice mid-ranged growls mixed and that really give the gutturals punch by contrast. They’ve hired backup on a couple of songs, including the legendary Larry Wang from Coprocephalic, who’s always a welcome addition to any album. It’s great to hear how the songwriting grew between the two records. The first ...
Post a Comment
Read more