Jesus' Diet Of Bread And Fish Did Him No Favours... It has to be said, I like the simple things in life; you know like, irony…I have a thing for irony, I’m easily amused! The concept of being run over by an ambulance for example tickles me, or a vegan with aggressive hay fever (even the plants are fed up of you..) so when an intense, post-hardcore black metal band called HEXIS comes along, I had to chuckle…Hexis if you didn’t know derives from a Latin term meaning stable disposition…so the two naturally go hand in hand… (I’m calm…I’m calm…I’m calm…I’M GOING TO BURN DOWN THAT FUCKING CHURCH!) But all jokes aside, since their formation in Copenhagen in 2010, they’ve been pretty busy! They’ve already released 4 split singles, 2 full length albums and this; “XII” (featuring Filip Andersen on vocals, Victor on both bass and guitar, and Tommaso on drums) is their 4th EP…not bad for seven years! Let’s compose ourselves and check it out…
We open up with the brutally brief “Derelictus” and as its name suggests it lays waste to all before it with little to no remorse…leaving the listener a hollow, abandoned shell, empty of reason. A real bullet point of a track at just over a minute in length, it hits hard and fast with a flurry of furious riffs coupled with raspy, hellish vocals and pummelling percussion and, just like the onslaught of a winter storm, it’s over as soon as it starts, a ferocious introduction this…we follow up with “Nefarius” and it utilises a slower introduction, allowing the listener to compose themselves if only momentarily…it’s brooding and really rather wicked in tone which again, befits its name, before we’re subject to yet more horrifyingly fast black-metal riffs and percussion…
The rest of the EP continues in a similar fashion pretty much…”Famelicus” slots directly in behind and plays with a morbid sense of desperation…equally unrelenting, and with the cries of “Nothing is sacred”…you feel there is a hunger for purpose…it hammers home a sense of suffering, while “Miseria” flows through with smooth continuation…another short one at two minutes, it soon bursts into life with pent up demonic rage, before closing track “Sacrificium” ends things on a very dramatic, almost cinematic note…the whole track comes across as grand, epic and climatic and rounds things off very well…inspired by the likes of CELESTE and THOU…you can hear where the influences of sludge and hardcore have combined with their Danish/Scandinavian black metal roots and it’s created a wall of noise that’s certainly not to be scoffed at…at just five tracks, it’s worth enduring the intensity to get through this beastly little EP…which gives you just over a quarter of an hour to go burn down that church. [5]
We open up with the brutally brief “Derelictus” and as its name suggests it lays waste to all before it with little to no remorse…leaving the listener a hollow, abandoned shell, empty of reason. A real bullet point of a track at just over a minute in length, it hits hard and fast with a flurry of furious riffs coupled with raspy, hellish vocals and pummelling percussion and, just like the onslaught of a winter storm, it’s over as soon as it starts, a ferocious introduction this…we follow up with “Nefarius” and it utilises a slower introduction, allowing the listener to compose themselves if only momentarily…it’s brooding and really rather wicked in tone which again, befits its name, before we’re subject to yet more horrifyingly fast black-metal riffs and percussion…
The rest of the EP continues in a similar fashion pretty much…”Famelicus” slots directly in behind and plays with a morbid sense of desperation…equally unrelenting, and with the cries of “Nothing is sacred”…you feel there is a hunger for purpose…it hammers home a sense of suffering, while “Miseria” flows through with smooth continuation…another short one at two minutes, it soon bursts into life with pent up demonic rage, before closing track “Sacrificium” ends things on a very dramatic, almost cinematic note…the whole track comes across as grand, epic and climatic and rounds things off very well…inspired by the likes of CELESTE and THOU…you can hear where the influences of sludge and hardcore have combined with their Danish/Scandinavian black metal roots and it’s created a wall of noise that’s certainly not to be scoffed at…at just five tracks, it’s worth enduring the intensity to get through this beastly little EP…which gives you just over a quarter of an hour to go burn down that church. [5]
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