Since the glory days of the eighties and nineties, death metal stardom has largely dispersed from its original home of Florida. Between both old-school revivalists and boundary-pushing innovators, most newer, popular death metal bands in North America come from various other regional scenes, most notably that of New York City. Florida once had the right conditions to let horror junkie teenagers craft the then most brutal music in the world. Now one wonders if the same conditions did not allow for the continuing rebirth and development of the local scene.
Haxprocess is a band from Jacksonville who are making a name anew for death metal’s home state. Their sound combines two in-vogue styles of the genre: old-school death metal worship, especially of Morbid Angel, and the expansive progressive soundscapes of modern titans like Blood Incantation and Tomb Mold. Their debut album, The Caverns of Duat, came out just in 2023. It was a savage slab of heavy, virtuosic riffing. Song structures were ambitious, but almost always maintained a focus on breaking the listener’s neck. They’ve made a clean two-year turnaround to their sophomore effort, Beyond What Eyes Can See, and in that time they’ve managed to refine and sharpen their sound to make it even more unstoppable.
The album consists of four mammoth tracks, the shortest sitting at nine and a half minutes, allowing for great ambitions within the digestible 45-minute runtime. The first track, “Where Even Stars Die”, fools the listener with its introductory bell tolling and clean picking. From there, it’s groovy riff after stupid groovy riff. It’s impressive how many they’re able to fit in this thing without stopping, and without becoming tiresome. The flavor of riff most resembles Immolation, though with the melodicism and more measured pace of, again, Blood Incantation and Tomb Mold. It also shares with these latter bands themes of existential dread and space exploration. Though the lyrics are unpublished and the vocals unintelligible, the title suggests this is the band’s second song about black holes (and just look at that cosmic album art). However, it does not take the same direction towards alternative influences and atmosphere that Blood Incantation and Tomb Mold recently have; again, it’s just riff after heavy-ass riff. The song runs until Haxprocess decides they are finished, ending on the same haunting clean picking it began with.
Haxprocess’ Morbid Angel influence does not dominate “Where Even Stars Die”, but it heavily marks the middle of the album. The second song, “The Confines of the Flesh”, mostly consists of low, thudding chromatic riffing and pinch harmonics reminiscent of Domination and Covenant. “Thy Inner Demon Seed” then goes even deeper into the worship with lyrics that strongly evoke the classic “God of Emptiness”. The climax of the song is perfectly intelligible and performs the same self-identification with a devil-like figure:
‘Obey me, human child,
Praise my hatred.
Adore me, human child,
Praise my malice.’
This is followed by a breakdown that is strikingly similar to the one from “God of Emptiness” as well, and there is no doubt that this band really, really loves Morbid Angel. The band supplements their worship with atmospheric clean-picked sections, which switch the energy to a more inquisitive tone. These breaks from the chaos allow both “The Confines of the Flesh” and “Thy Inner Demon Seed” to exceed the length of any Morbid Angel song without dragging. So far, Haxprocess hasn’t lost any steam with Beyond What Eyes Can See.
“The Sepuchral Void” returns to the proggy vibes that the album started with, and is likewise a sea of crushing riffs. The first half of the song also takes things in a new direction with elements of black metal. The latter half is a bit soaked in the prog Kool-Aid for my taste, and the minutes-long clean breaks, wandering solos, and extended ending feel overindulgent. That said, it tries new things, and though it isn’t quite the non-stop romp of the others on the album, it does have standout moments.
Beyond What Eyes Can See rises above the vast majority of modern progressive death metal albums simply by going harder than most can. The style of riffing here is versatile, attacking the listener from so many different angles, but every riff comes together in such a satisfying, propulsive way. In a genre that is so preoccupied with achieving grandiose atmosphere, it is easy to leave behind the pounding urgency that was central to classic death metal. With this album, Haxprocess has managed to merge the best of both old-school worship and modern prog death metal, bringing Florida back to the front lines of death metal excellence.
