Album Review: Hexrot - Formless Ruin of Oblivion
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I think that metalheads often underrate just how harsh our musical tastes can be. It’s an argument I’ve had with my mother a million times – she thinks that metal is more or less just noise. Obviously I think she is wrong, but who is to blame her for that view really? She watched me grow up becoming more and more enamoured with music that seemed to purposefully corrupt musical concepts she held sacrosanct. She’s a very musically talented individual, my mother. Perfect pitch, multi-instrumentalist, good vocalist, frequently part of the band at church. I suppose to a woman used to stirring renditions of major-key hymns to the good lord, having a son diving headfirst into the silage of death metal and grindcore must have been a tad perturbing. Those of us who love metal don’t need to be told, but the genre as a whole is dense with melody, complexity, masterful composition, experimentation, and more besides. Easy enough to explain when even the most cloth-eared would be hard pressed to argue that there lurks not the daintiest whit of a tune within the monolithic works of, say, Judas Priest. But it does become slightly more arduous to argue the point once you attain the reaches of extreme metal and are confronted with a sumptuous landslide of blasts, gurgles and distortion. Still, so far as arguing the musical merits of most grievously cantankerous compositions go, I could have been handed a tougher example to defend than this new Hexrot release.
It’s a tumultuous path that Hexrot pave, penned as one long song sectioned out into seven separate loops through the overall maze of its soundscape. It flows and tangles like mating cobras, sudden instrumental flourishes stabbing like cockroach limbs. The drum kit cavorts and dances beneath eel-fingered leads, bass burly and clear throughout. Its slinky, a creature of legato flurries, and there’s warmth to the production, the complexity and depth rendered somehow comfortable. Insofar as a death metal release can be cosy, this one is. I’m unsure whether the band would appreciate a comparison between their music and a big mug of hot chocolate on a rainy day, but, well, that’s what the production put me in mind of. It exists in a curious space in which words that don’t necessarily pertain to a sound but that somehow manage to describe it also reside; words like “natural” or “organic”. Wholesome, almost. The rouge blush of a good brandy on Christmas. There’s a boisterous playfulness to it as “Clandestine Haunt” flips from the razor-edged chaos of it’s introduction to a flighty, buoyant thrash riff. There's art to it’s transitions, the intelligence of it’s nuances enhanced for the sheer fun the music has to offer – “Formless Ruin of Oblivion” grinds down into this degenerating doom closure at it’s end, slower and slower until you can hear the marrow atrophying in your bones.
It never stands still, yet wisely steers well clear of the vertiginous plummet into mindless chaos. It’s probably about as accessible as this sort of music gets – busy, but with all things allotted proper space to breathe and stretch. The tapping leads of “What Lies Veiled” shimmer through a gorgeous mix, and swirling cosmic ambience cordons out gentler respite for the rest of the music to contrast against. I’m normally rather unimpressed with delicate, airy interludes but perhaps because of how comprehensively every bit of the release seems glued to sensible moorings they work fantastically within the context of the album as a whole. But yet, this is, at the end of the day, a death metal album. For all the nifty tricks it picked up over the years scribbling notes in the back of jazz bars, peering through a hovering cataract of Marlboro smoke, it still needs some claws to it. Thankfully, it holds the flensing blade ever close to one palm or another. Worrisome bombing runs of blast-infused discordance christen the coming of “Formless Ruin of Oblivion” after it’s darkly pastoral opening gives way to more unfriendly territory . It is for the most part a fast, agile album that links differing tempos and time signatures together with such aplomb as to suggest the band was vat-grown for naught else.
I’ve had a real grand time with Hexrot here; they don’t pierce the upper strata of tech death brilliance to perch alongside masterworks such as “Unquestionable Presence” but their svelte blend of jazzy prog-death goes down damn smooth, smoky on the aftertaste. Warming. Comforting. It’s a consistently invigorating exercise that keeps you locked into it’s hydra-neck groove while understanding on some preternatural level when best to yank the rug clean out from under you. I’ve had nothing bad to say about it over however many listens I’ve given it (a lot), so while there are things it could do better, expanding on those things would be more a question of pointing out how I reckon something already at mirror-sheen could be polished to the point of being blinding, as opposed to identifying a specific fault as such. I can’t promise that my mum would enjoy it, but, well, you can’t please everyone. If, for some reason, you only just heard Atheist and you’re itching for more, then swing by the noodly realm of Hexrot; I’m sure you’ll find your fix.
