Changing up an established sound always carries with it risk, and Hexvessel are no strangers to experimenting. Mainly siphoning the 60s and 70s for inspiration, they have concocted several brews of Folk Rock and Psychedelic Rock since releasing their debut in 2011. No Holier Temple is the album that has stuck with me, owing to its lost-in-the-witchy-woods style of sinister yet beautiful ambient Folk Music. While loosely following them through subsequent releases, it has seemed to me that they never quite struck as good a balance between ethereal mystery and sharply written songs since that sophomore album. Polar Veil caught my attention simply by breaking the ice with distorted guitar in its first preview track. Hexvessel has used this before (and its members are no strangers to Metal), but Blackened Doom Metal was really not something I expected to hear from these guys. Sure enough, the usual airy Folk Rock is this time augmented with Black Metal and 70’s Doom Metal. “Older Than the Gods” takes Hexvessel closer than they have ever been to the Neo-Folk infused Post-Black Metal of Agalloch circa The Mantle, but with a more Scandinavian bent. “A Cabin in Montana” starts out sounding like an Ereb Altor song before developing into Black Sabbath Doom, meanwhile “Eternal Meadow” launches into some straight second wave Black Metal in its intro before a gorgeous breakdown into Hexvessel‘s previously established Folk sound. Experiments like these turn out great and I want to believe in this new direction.
However, one of the album’s biggest flaws is that it simply does not go far enough down this road. What the above mentioned tracks do so well is that they take an already established style and apply it to the genres that the band has picked out (intentionally or just by following the writing process). The otherworldly vocals of Mathew Kvohst McNerney pull a lot of weight in this regard, balancing the hostile sounding Black Metal moments. In contrast to this, songs like “The Tundra is Awake” and “Crepuscular Creatures” sound like Hexvessel songs with an added layer of tremolo riffs and this takes away some of the gravitas of the other songs. As “Homeward Polar Spirit” starts closing out the album with the sound of a distorted church bell (?) behind the Black Metal, I am left wishing that Hexvessel would give in fully to their experimental inclinations. Because when they do, ominous magic happens.
