HEXVESSEL : "Nocturne"

Seven albums into their legacy, this Finnish band continues to ebb and flow with both neo-folk and black metal in their veins. In some way, this picks up where "Polar Veil" left off; in other ways, it expands upon it, with more layered voices that sound like the hippie choir persona of their folk era, now haunting this album, and finds a more balanced blend of those melodic folk textures. So if you are a fan of both the folk and black period, then this album is for you. What I like about it is how it darkness the hippy tendencies. I mean, my favorite hippy is Charles Manson, so I want it pretty dark. 

I don't remember harsh vocals on the last album, though they might have surfaced sparsely toward the end. I think the balance of vocal styles here works really well. There is a more Burzum feel to the cold riff that opens "Inward Landscapes". The vocals sit further back in the mix, with the guitars very forward.  This song is also broken up with a more drastic shift into folk guitar. When the electric guitar returns, there are a few layers with some of which have a more ghostly reverb.  The graceful vocal melody balances out the old-school black guitar on " Dark Graceful Wilderness". Synths also swirl around to create a deeper level of ambiance. 

The first time the vocals do not settle over the more jarring guitar in a flowing manner is on "Masked Spirit Wolf". It's a more belted vocal than what we are used to hearing from him. The darker, more deliberate chug to "Nights Tender Reckoning' feels like a metal version of Grave Pleasures, which  I am always up for. Things get pretty grim for "Mother Destroyer" but still work well. "Concealed Descent" is more of a folk interlude. The syncopated stomp of "Unworld" is one of the album's strongest moments. The last song finds his sung vocals trading off with screamed vocals, which align with black metal more expectedly. I want the unexpected. Still the strongest moments of this album feel more dynamic than the previous album so I will round this up to a 10.Dropping June 13th on Prophecy Productions.

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