Close your eyes and listen to Hexvessel.
Led since 2009 by Mat Kvohst McNerney (vocals/guitar, Grave Pleasures, ex-Dødheimsgard…), Kimmo Helén (keyboards/guitar), Jukka Rämänen (drums, Dark Buddha Rising, Waste of Space Orchestra) and Ville Hakonen (bass), the band signed to Prophecy Productions has announced the release of its seventh opus, Nocturne.
The album also features Aleksi Kiiskilä on lead guitar and Saara Nevalainen (Sapata) on female vocals.
Opening gently greets us with a slow, melancholy piano, but this first contact with the album is quickly followed by Sapphire Zephyrs, where the sound darkens and is joined by drums, followed by raw, moody riffs. The intensity rises a notch when the first scream sets the rhythmic pattern ablaze, but it’s ultimately an ominous clear vocal that accompanies us through this occult, dissonant haze, which breaks and picks up again before finally exploding all at once with Saara before opening with Inward Landscapes. The track is quite similar: haunting and borrowing from Doom, mixed in a very raw way, but also very polished, as can be observed in the vocals, borrowing its soothing atmosphere progresses at its own pace and is adorned with violins before the singer returns to hypnotize us until A Dark Graceful Wilderness sets much more strident tones. To my surprise, the vocal parts are some of the softest on the album, but the contrast works wonderfully, lulling us before we surrender to Spirit Masked Wolf, whose riffs are slightly more energetic, but which hypnotizes us in its own way and leaves us to admire it. We fall back into the darkness for Nights Tender Reckoning, which lets us gravitate around its soothing dissonance and takes us on a journey to join the misty wisps of Mother Destroyer, which marks a sonic break before returning to the opaque mist and its more virulent Black Metal touches. The violence is a little more pronounced in the rhythmics, but disappears completely on Concealed Descent, which is also devoid of violence, offering a few airy notes to accompany Kvohst‘s voice. There’s a complete change of atmosphere on the abrasive Unworld, where hints of Sludge are heard to complement the oppressive riffs and ever-so-calm vocals, but the finale is also marked by dark synthesizers before Phoebus reveals all its majestic coldness disturbed by the fury of its roots, once again creating a fascinating contrast to which the screams fit perfectly and complete the picture that definitively joins the void.
I admit to knowing little about Hexvessel, but what I hear on Nocturne appeals to me, combining the darkness of Old School Atmospheric Black Metal with much softer touches, such as the quasi-permanent clean vocals and the soothing passages. It’s impossible to remain neutral about such a mix!
80/100