Hexvessel - Kindred
The Quietus
Under normal circumstances, the phrase to wear one’s influences on one’s sleeves is a means of damning with faint praise, a way of saying that an artist is seriously unoriginal – but at least they have good taste. However, every so often a record comes out that is steeped in an avalanche of recognisable sounds, references that would in other hands become derivative, but somehow achieves the unlikely feat of being totally arresting. Kindred, the latest opus from Finnish psych-folk outfit Hexvessel, is one such album.
Such a successful distillation of influences is surely the result of experience, practice, and a damned inquisitive mind, seemingly that of lead singer Mathew ‘Kvohst’ McNerney. Under McNerney’s guiding hand, driven by his esoteric lyrics and shapeshifting vocals, a crack team of deeply learned heavy psych musicians embark on a journey into the celestial realm that only lasts thirty-nine minutes but feels like it stretches much longer. It’s a realm of dark pagan gods, battles between good and evil, and blasted, forested landscapes. Ritual, mythology, mysticism and philosophy: all these themes familiar to fans of a certain strand of bleak folk-rock are present and correct. And yet they are there in a way that somehow manages to find surprises for the listener.
Take opener ‘Billion Year Old Being’. There are references to hunter gatherers of yore, to the protagonist’s name spoken on the wind and edifices made of bones. There are spindly acoustic guitar patterns at the start that merge into crushing martial drums and chanted vocals. Then, almost out the blue, the piece shifts and accelerates in a flurry of polyrhythms and whirling organ. The clear influence here is the coda on King Crimson’s ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ – minus the sax – and it could have been an incongruous addition amid such a grave pagan folk context. But somehow it works – perhaps because McNerney has zeroed in on the quasi-religious, folk-Christian imagery behind KC’s In the Court of the Crimson King and married it to his own brand of rather serious spiritual reflections.
It feels apt writing this review on May Day because, for all Kindred’s occasional deployment of prog flourishes or Sabbath-style riffs (‘Demian’) and the slight forays into dramatic Nick Cave territory (the vocal on ‘Phaedra’ could almost be a tribute act), this is a folk album through and through. I know it’s known as ‘forest folk’, but really this album is part of a pan-European tradition that stretches back to the likes of Comus (‘Phaedra’ again) and even more obscure acts of the 60s and 70s folk-rock tradition such as Mr Fox, Sand, Alrune Rod, Trees, Jan Dukes de Grey and Pearls Before Swine (or more recent acts like Riharc Smiles and Tenhi) all the way through to, more than any other band, Current 93, whose influence is most palpable on tracks like the superlative ‘Bog Bodies’ and ‘Fire of the Mind’. Where Hexvessel show particular deftness is in the way that very European tradition is melded with American Appalachian styles (again, on ‘Bog Bodies’, plus tracks like ‘Sic Luceat Lux’) that evoke artists like Ben Weaver, Jesse Sykes and Crow Tongue. This is an album that takes the primordial essence of common human fear and maps it across a great many traditions.
While many moments on Kindred are heavy and noisy, above all it’s a fragile and brittle – even paranoid – reflection on both the past and the present, refracted through a wealth of pagan and religious reference points as if McNerney and co. were omnivorous cultural and spiritual magpies. Its most beautiful moments are the most placid ones, where the overt influences fall away or become irrelevant enough to let you bask in the strange sylvan swell of Hexvessel’s singular focus. Oh, and McNerney has a voice to send shivers through your core more than even Current 93’s David Tibet, as best displayed on the magnificent ‘Kindred Moon’. There may be a lot of influences at play on Kindred, but it always manages to rise above them.
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Mon May 04 11:06:14 GMT 2020Angry Metal Guy 40
Finnish forest folk band Hexvessel‘s music conjures images of druids and deep, misty woods, and I’ve been a fan since Steel covered No Holier Temple. I love this sort of mystical folk-influenced music, a genre my partner describes as “witchy music.” Right after I wrote about All Tree, I saw them play an enchanting show in an incense-steeped church in London. And now, of course, we’re all stuck in quarantine and unable to actually go wander in the woods. You’d think, then, that I should be excited for another album. Unfortunately, I had somewhat mixed feelings about All Tree, and here on album number five only a year after the last, the specter of AMG’s Law of Diminishing Recordings looms large.
Right from the start, Hexvessel do what they do best: establish that forest atmosphere. Here on Kindred, the atmosphere and themes are bleaker than previously—there are druidic rituals and sacrifice in these woods. Frontman Mat McNerny’s vocals are haunted and chant-like, Jesse Heikkinen’s guitars and Kimmo Helén’s keys and strings sparse and ominous, all over Jukka Rämänen’s solemn ritual drumbeat. Seven-minute opening track “Billion Year Old Being” shows Hexvessel at their best, flowing between moods. Expertly navigated from the spooky opening melodies through a dark worship chant and occult 60s keyboard jam to a final movement like dark clouds parting, it somehow never feels incoherent.
Kindred by Hexvessel
Unfortunately, the rest of the album is never quite able to recapture that magic. The songs get shorter, their composition more straightforward, their moods more consistently bleak. Where “Billion Year Old Being” moves and changes, later songs drag. I start having trouble telling them apart as many follow an almost identical structure. There’s a sparse instrumental opening—maybe an acoustic guitar or a piano—over which mournful vocals join. Halfway through the song, drums and rhythm instrumentation come in. (“Fire of the Mind,” “Bog Bodies,” “Kindred Moon,” …) This wouldn’t be the worst thing if the songs were memorable in other ways, but the emphasis on atmosphere seems to have also come at the cost of catchy or interesting melodies. This isn’t something I’ve really felt with previous Hexvessel albums. Somehow, despite such homogeneous songs, it also manages to have pacing issues. There are two short interludes. “Sic Luceat Lux” is a jangly oddity, sounding unpleasantly like a guitar cover of the clocks chiming in Floyd‘s “Time.” “Family” is a more traditional acoustic guitar piece. These bracket a single short track, “Phaedra,” entirely shredding its momentum.
In a more varied setting, some of these pieces would be worth keeping. While none quite touch the opening track, I enjoy the callback to When We Are Death‘s more straightforward 60s rock on “Demian” and the insistent feeling of “Phaedra.” “Kindred Moon” is perhaps the best of the most consistently composed songs, feeling a bit more like the majority of Hexvessel‘s back catalog. The whole thing sounds wonderful too, helped by a clear and dynamic master by John Davis. Their wide range of instruments all sound great, particularly the drums, which are powerful but never dominating. It never feels cluttered despite all the moving parts.
Where Hexvessel have set out to conjure an atmosphere, they have succeeded as adroitly as ever. Sadly, Kindred otherwise suffers from exactly the sort of problems you’d expect when it’s only been a year since the last album. There are good ideas in here, and in particular “Billion Year Old Being” is as good as they’ve ever been. But there’s just not enough material to sustain a 40-minute LP, and some of what there is lacks polish. Had this been an EP follow-up to All Tree, as Iron Marsh was to No Holier Temple, or just given more time to develop, it could have been great. But as it is, the strong atmosphere and the good bits aren’t enough to support the weight of all that filler.
Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Svart Records
Websites: hexvessel.bandcamp.com | hexvessel.com | facebook.com/hexvessel
Releases Worldwide: April 17th, 2020
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Tue Apr 14 11:30:55 GMT 2020