(written by Islander)
Haxes and hexes…
Transcending Obscurity Records has established a global reputation for good taste, and quite varied taste. Their roster of bands run a broad gamut of metal sub-genres, and their releases over many years now have been consistently excellent. At this very site, we’ve had a vivid demonstration of this over just the past week.
Five days ago we premiered an astonishing epic-length song by the Floridian progressive death metal band Haxprocess, and today we’re following that with a song from the Massachusetts duo Hexrot, a much shorter song by comparison but thoroughly head-spinning nonetheless. Its evocative name is “Consecrating Luminous Conflagration.”
This song is one of 7 new tracks on Hexrot‘s debut album Formless Ruin of Oblivion; the album also includes all four of the songs from the band’s first release, the Gloomwrought EP released in 2022. Before we provide our own preview of what you’re about to hear, here’s the band’s preview circulated by Transcending Obscurity:
“Formless Ruin of Oblivion is the second release from Massachusetts duo Hexrot, combining a dense stylistic mélange of death, black, and thrash metal with inventive electronic experimentation and a keen sense of structure. The 35-minute piece flows continuously across 7 tracks, maintaining a constant tension between the harmony and dissonance of its ever-shifting web of musical ideas. Seamlessly interwoven, a bed of modular synthesizer and other digital flourishes run the gamut from clangorous and industrial to warm and ethereal. The immediacy of a live studio recording gives its performances authenticity and power, but careful production ensures you’ll still be discovering new things multiple listens in. To our most fully realized expression to date, we bid you welcome.”
Transcending Obscurity has a list of “FFO” references for Hexrot‘s album that is itself head-spinning — Felgrave, Construct of Lethe, Deathspell Omega, Blut aus Nord, Death, Ulcerate, and Veilburner. Even this one song you’re about to hear will give you a sense of why T.O. identifies all of those vaunted names.
“Consecrating Luminous Conflagration” puts the listener aboard a sonic whirligig that never spins at the same speed for very long and is packed to the brim with equally fast-changing changing instrumental motifs, morphing moods, and ranging vocal insanities.
The music is remarkably intricate, and the production astutely lets us discern each one of the mutating moving parts and how technically accomplished they are. The music is also remarkably surreal, thanks in part to the afore-mentioned bamboozling nature of the changes but also thanks to the dissonance and minor-key strangeness of the fretwork ingredients and the rampant veering of the drum patterns.
Unexpectedly, many of the music’s bizarre configurations set little fleeting hooks in the listener’s head as they appear, disappear, and reappear, and while the bass and drums often go off on their own unpredictable frolics, they also bludgeon, blast, and set hooks of their own.
The result is a truly mind-warping escapade, full of menace and madness, of berserk jubilation and vicious savagery, of demented noodling and gloomy confusion. And though it’s not possible for the cavalcade of harsh vocals to match all the instrumental twists and turns, it comes close.
HEXROT:
Arkain – Guitars, bass, vocals
Melmoth – Drums, vocals, electronics
Formless Ruin of Oblivion was mastered by Colin Marston at Menegroth, the Thousand Caves. The cover art is an excerpt from “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymous Bosch.
T.O. will release the album on August 29th, on CD and digital formats, with apparel and other merch for the album. As noted above, they recommend it for fans of Felgrave, Construct of Lethe, Deathspell Omega, Blut aus Nord, Death, Ulcerate, and Veilburner. Two more of the new songs on the album are currently streamable at Bandcamp, along with the four from the preceding EP, but we’ve also included streams of those two new ones below.
PRE-ORDER:
https://hexrot-label.bandcamp.com/album/formless-ruin-of-oblivion
http://transcendingobscurity.aisamerch.com/
http://eu.tometal.com/
HEXROT:
https://facebook.com/hexrot
https://instagram.com/hexrot.band