Gripping the edges of their portal to the abyss and reveling in the sensation of the gravity swelling past Finnish black metal duo HEXEREI apply even more serious, body-clenching command to this imposing and sinister sophomore full-length album. Though the pulverization of their craft is familiar and doesn’t finagle any sort of exaggerative complexity beyond its central point of inspiration there yet a satisfyingly brutal vacuum within ‘Realms…..‘ and its overall play with pacing which makes it a thrill to discover. Here the trio explore an animalistic inverted worldview through a second set of acts of thoughtless mayhem, a feat which is largely made coherent for its moment-to-moment action via their blazing drive and sans any sort of ear-appeasing patternation beyond the engine-like vortices created.

Hexerei appeared beyond forbidden incantations and a screaming gnarl of smoke in the dark hours of 2017 yet only revealed themselves to the horror of the public by way of their first demo tape (‘Aural Abyss‘, 2018), a tense and echoic semi-dissonant stream of black metal presented in a rushed-forth and longer form style one’d typically associate with Katharsis inspired muse. Thus far the conversation on the band hasn’t budged significantly from that hinge point, that first tape provided a glimpse of the (anonymous) trio’s fortitude and wild sense of momentum and their second tape (‘Oath‘, 2019) compounded the band’s focus on primordial mayhemic black metal sounds. It took a fair amount of time for their debut LP (‘Ancient Evil Spirits‘, 2021) to get picked up for broader physical releases in 2022. After checking out their first tape the rest of their material kinda paled in comparison from my point of view, their debut felt underdeveloped and lacking the conviction of their starting point. It wasn’t a bad album by any means but for my own taste this follow-up has more to say, more riffs, and manages to scramble brains with even more maniac blasphemies than before.

The major goal of the band as stated in reprisal of a form of black metal which amounts to anti-music, gateways to blasphemic horror and aggression which is not expressly musical in its forms. You can hear the tempered ideation of raw black metal in their work, though their sound design has never been outright obnoxious and references to (early) Armagedda, Culte Des Ghoules and such make sense in this context of capturing a hellish and storming attack which is just short of absolute cacophony. It’d make sense to consider recent works from Thanatomass and labelmates Black Fucking Cancer on the walk-up but both of these are only similar in some shared inspiration and love of ranting, maniac black metal forms but there is no real death metal engine within Hexerei‘s modus by direct comparison.

You’re not likely to hear the unheard-of riff on this album. What I mean is that ‘Realms…..‘ has riffs, plenty of great and groaning-loose throat gripping rhythms but the explorer of the bestial black, war metal, and blackened death spectrum will appreciate this record for its caustic speed and maniac performance rather than its ingenuity or sense of statement. Opener “Omenstorm of Eucharist Massacre” doesn’t get all that creative with its rhythms outright, stabbing loosely at punkish structures courted between faster pace and slower haul. Ear-grinding leads generate some interest to start but this song, and most all of this album, is at its best when diving into percussive and imposing rant. The ride through this song is its entertainment value, blitzing and rasping through decisive and raw movements with an appreciable abandon.

The ten minute follow-up, “The Sabbath Red”, keeps that thread going while greatly expanding (and repeating a good chunk of) their rhythmic vocabulary using several of the same riffs as transitional markers between parts (see: ~4:15 minutes in). At the peak intensity of that second song we take a ride down to hellish possession, complete descent to the point that its siphon becomes a cyclone of noxious, chaotic groaning steel and jet-engine screaming build as the song pushes through its eighth minute. This is easily one of the most effective points of immersion on the full listen and likely where most listeners will have submitted to Hexerei‘s vortex of dread. I’d been most impressed at that point having gone in hoping for their earliest impact via that 2018 demo and here we’ve a whole album more-or-less in that vein.

Otherwise these folks’ve authored this album in a way which repeats its general structures multiple times, recreating the impact of “The Sabbath Red” and its point of ever-escalating speed with “Skinless Prophecy” only that time they’d tightened the throttle of their work doubly so. It soon becomes clear that ‘Realms…..‘ doesn’t aspire to be a deeper thought and overall there is no great enlightenment to be found in examining the band’s rhythms with such a fine-toothed ear; The action of Hexerei‘s work, the rapacious and immediate grinding aggression of it, is both tribute to a certain tradition and proposed as pure bloodied-up energetic command. They’ve got the right level of maniac feeling in hand, applying their blitz to a primitive sense of moment in a way which is direct and easy to follow.

As I’d stated earlier the riffs hold up moment-to-moment as pure movement but not so much in hindsight, after revisiting said patternation time and again their effect did eventually wane on my end. Much as I appreciate the style Hexerei are aiming for ‘Realms…..‘ recreates a familiar sensation more than it exemplifies it per my own taste, following up their previous album with fairly direct iteration, tweaking some of their action to suit a more immersive result. As such the main reason I’d returned to this one was its overall immersive value and the skull-slapping psychotic volatility of its first half. A moderately high recommendation.

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