Intended as a transcendental ritual of the night, a descent into the dusk commissioned for a prominent festival stage performance this seventh full-length album from Helsinki, Finland-based folken atmospheric metal quartet HEXVESSEL presents an enlarged view, a thicker double LP sized volume for chapter two of their delve into chilling nightside mysticism. Bloomed into an hourlong ear-spiraling ambient extreme metal spell ‘Nocturne‘ aims to capture the essence of the night experienced through mystic senses, a scene where our protagonist walks and waltzes through solitary nightly steps conducting and humming in time with the pulse of thier surroundings. Thoroughly funereal in its haunting folken atmospheric black metal-stirred invocation this release intentionally recalls and expands upon the sound introduced on the band’s previous LP to the point of charming exstasis. This latest work serves an ambitious, satisfyingly complete thought which charms with it’s personal spiritual conveyance while making sure to hook into mind via its own richly melodic, at-times experimental shadowy haunt.

Hexvessel probably don’t need another full discography recap on my part, having reviewed their previous three albums in great detail and praised each more than the last. In fact ‘Polar Veil‘ (2023) not only received high praise on my end but landed at #17 on my Top 75 Albums of the Year as a lasting favorite in their discography thus far. Becoming familiar with that record is recommended in concert with your exploration of ‘Nocturne‘ as the original 2024 performance created Mat McNerney for the 2024 Roadburn Festival (as ‘Music for Gloaming: A Nocturne‘) was created as a reaction to and expansion of that prior release, echoing its style and theme. This album is the studio version, enriched much in the same way Waste of Space Orchestra‘s performance was for their studio recording of a one-time commissioned performance. Take note that the ‘Deluxe Edition‘ of this album includes the Roadburn performance. So, head in expecting the forest-wandering black metal muse of that previous album revived and explored deeper still.

The piano melody which forms between a brief intro and the first couple minutes of opener “Sapphire Zephyrs” should hold your attention to start but the squelch of several footswitches and twist of the volume knob that hits around ~33 seconds into the song is where ‘Nocturne‘ begins summoning its night-spirited, northern black metal inspired guitar work. A riff and a rolling beat drive us toward one of very few rasped exclamations from McNerney who arrives upon his fixated, clean-sung muse alongside ghostly choral vibrato from Saara Nevalainen, her accompaniment serving as a key presence on the first several pieces. Less an absolute blizzard and more a slow-building deluge this eight minute piece immediately makes good on the “forest folken atmospheric black metal” explored within ‘Polar Veil‘ while testing it to its extremes, already taking a very different angle. Some of the more affecting harmonies arrive here nearby some of the more harsh, ear-scouring guitar riffs and the balance is haunting, atypically charged in its read.

That opener alongside “Inward Landscapes” still bears an early Scandinavian pagan black dreamlike viscosity and drift to it, an atmosphere which is exacerbated by acoustic guitar hook (~2:53 minutes into that second song) channeling something like ye olde Ulver (or, Burzum) especially as we check into the ~6:37 minute mark and feel that early 90’s gloom in Hexvessel‘s own context. The ghostly wavering choral vocals which follow (via Nevalainen) grant this song a supernatural sensation, a surreal end to the crooked waltz taking place. Whatever it may be Hexvessel find their tangent and seize into it on most records, fully exploring a set vision: The step from the prog-folk of ‘When We are Death‘ (2016) to the folken rune-reading, planet hugging spiritus of ‘All Tree‘ (2019) speak to versatility through complete thoughts, conception with a vision enacted. Our walk hand-and-hoof into the first half of ‘Nocturne‘ takes its time more than usual, presenting itself in songs that read as chapters, each showing some appreciation for the both the biting danger and natural commune with the forest at night. This is felt strongest within those first five or so pieces on my part.

Never lacking in creative abandon and certainly not expressivity Hexvessel naturally flourish and thrive within this nightside fixation, still finding more depth within the folken black metal fusion as we reach the mid-point of the album though they’ve more to bring beyond the strides of (one of my favorite pieces here) “Spirit Masked Wolf” which we will consider the halfway point for the sake of it. I’d found those first ~five or so tracks contiguous in spirit, a mostly walking-and-jogging exploration that’d been difficult to step away from without seeing it through.

This’d all been pretty familiar expansion of known territory, spellbinding material for sure and no lesser for it but I’d felt like some manner of funereal reckoning occurred as “Nights Tender Reckoning” hit, shaking off some of the ice on the brow and pulling in what I’d consider Finnish funereal gloom into the song’s folken shape as it lands. The tone of the album hasn’t massively shifted but reached a profound node of atmospheric doom which then blurs and weaves beyond that point. With this in mind I’ll reiterate that the immersive value of ‘Nocturne‘ is potentially its greatest strength even beyond the atmospheric black metal side of Hexvessel revisited and droning a bit harder. The bulk of the second half is no less black metal in spirit but experiments in several different ways, seeking a path beyond what’d been established. “Mother Destroyer” is a fine example as the most insistently scraped-at use of dual distorted guitars to give shape and obsession to a piece on this album while experimenting with heavier synth usage and art-metal narration. There is yet a piece of this band, certainly McNerney, that must find the surreal gloom and grandeur of 90’s Scandinavian “prog-black” compelling even when presented from a purely minimalist vantage point.

The Vicotnik (Dødheimsgard) lead “Unworld” takes the already haunted depth of ‘Nocturne‘ and sends us to shamble and sway through the graveyard with it as if a ritual summoning a wailing well of souls. Caught in moonlight and framed by the awkward chord-chunking step of its rhythms this is the psychedelic shaman-sourced high of the album, the breach at the brightest point of night sky… and a sound which could easily be its own ritualistic doom act. Though I’m not sure if this or the blackgazing Juho Vanhanen (Oranssi Pazuzu, Grave Pleasures) spot on closer “Phoebus” felt immediately related to the rest of the album they’d done well to find a meaningful and well-suited piece for each imposing avant-black metal artist. I’m not sure if the quasi post-hardcore feeling drift of the closer was my favorite moment but I did appreciate that the song circled back to brief opener (uh, “Opening”) which carries that ending motif right back into cycle. This might be a small detail to some but from my point of view it’d encouraged another spin much of the time and naturally represented the cyclic nature of the night.

Another “smaller” detail which speaks in volumes as I sit with ‘Nocturne‘ comes via cover artwork from Benjamin König (ex-Lunar Aurora, Sperber Illustrationen) who carries this scene beyond the night’s arrival on ‘Polar Veil‘ and now casts a rush of frost and snow through a skull-faced spirit’s hands down upon that same hamlet. As a big fan of albums like ‘Seelenfeuer‘ finding music in this unique style represented by this distinct imagery feels both aesthetically keen and created with intent/vision in an age where rising corporatism endeavors to devalue the artist from every angle. It only adds to the experience alongside a robust booklet with plenty of care put into its layout. It is one thing to create immersive music but another to put together a ~36 page booklet (for the deluxe CD version) and give the eyes and hands something relevant to pour over, to me it speaks to a higher standard of care than most can/would manage.

That observation naturally extends to the breadth of this album as an experience which not only rose to the occasion as a performance but lead a sincerely captivating, imaginative double album beyond what anyone might’ve expected from Hexvessel, a troupe which goes where it pleases and rarely rests in the same place twice. There is yet nothing else which exactly matches what these folks do, either in the folken space or anything black metal adjacent and that factors into my enjoyment quite a bit as I’d not expected a continuation of this dark mystic woods-wandering sound much less a broadened opus in continuation. A very high recommendation.

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