Y’all like dissonant metal, right? Because your answer to that question is going to determine whether I say Hexrot‘s debut Formless Ruin of Oblivion deserves the highest recommendation or a gentle suggestion to pass. For me personally, there was so much going for Hexrot when I saw their name pop up on our review list that I just couldn’t pass it up. A fresh-faced dissonant progressive death metal band, signed to Transcending Obscurity Records, mastered by Colin Marston, adorned with a detail from the same Bosch painting that Celtic Frost took the Into the Pandemonium cover art from? Formless Ruin of Oblivion was a veritable buzzword salad for metalheads like me before even a single note was heard. Stacked expectations, wouldn’t you think?
Well, as luck would have it, the Massachusetts-based Hexrot put just as much thought into Formless Ruin of Oblivion‘s music as its presentation. What we have before us here is a dizzying display of heavily thrash-informed progressive death metal, composed as a single thirty-five-minute composition conveniently separated out into seven tracks. It’s an audacious debut album for certain, but the duo (oh yeah, this band is only two people) handle it with aplomb. Across Formless Ruin of Oblivion, listeners can expect all the warped, angular riffing of Obscura-era Gorguts, Symbolic-era Death, and a heaping helping of the warped chord choices and choppy thrashing of Voivod blended with a tasteful helping of doomier crawl and electronic ambience.
It put a genuine smile on my face when the opening ambience of “What Lies Veiled” gave way to a riff that felt knowingly reminiscent of “Symbolic Acts” by Death. Hexrot isn’t ashamed of giving nods to their influences, and it gave my first couples listens a sense of comforting familiarity. Which, admittedly, ended up very helpful, because Formless Ruin of Oblivion is a dense album. Across the album runtime, Hexrot is constantly careening through spidery riffs, alien time signatures, and rapid dynamic shifts. Here and there, the band will use a riff more than once (that Death-esque riff, for instance), but the songwriting does have a stream of conscious feel that I found myself very taken with.
For as twisted as the album’s riffing is, sheer intensity isn’t the name of the game, and I appreciate how Hexrot‘s composition metamorphoses in a way that makes logical sense and relies on texture over sheer blunt force. The opening trio of tracks (also made up of “Heavenward” and “Consecrating Luminous Conflagration”) feels like the most jagged and serpentine part of the album, before the album dissolves into shimmering ambience in “Ghostly Retrograde I”. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of fury later, “Clandestine Haunt” finds the band giving their riffs more breathing room and groove, as if the band recalibrated their whole approach and evolved mid-recording. For lack of better words, it’s just plain cool.
Following another dissolution in “Ghostly Retrograde II”, Hexrot arrives at “Formless Ruin of Oblivion” proper, and the differences feel even more stark. The sparse, doomy intro of the track is awash in moody psychedelia redolent of a band like Esoteric, and even when the riffs come down, they’re much more controlled and ominously trudging. Across the final 16 minutes, the album genuinely feels like it begins to disassemble itself, with progressions beginning to interrupt each other almost at random until all metal gives out for an acoustic coda that could have come from Opeth‘s Orchid before celestial synths ease the album out. It’s truly an enrapturing way to close out the album.
The one place where I do stumble with Formless Ruin of Oblivion (and hence my opening question) is that, for all its remarkable ideas, exceptional musicality, and spot-on production, it takes several listens to parse what Hexrot is doing at any given moment. Shoot, I’d given the album multiple listens before I really processed the spoken vocals on “Heavenward” due to still processing the preceding movements. Formless Ruin of Oblivion is a genuine Gordian knot of an album and were it not for the band’s tasteful riff craft and slick grooves, there’d be a risk that the album could live up to its own name too well.
Despite its chaotic approach though, Formless Ruin of Oblivion is proof that Hexrot is a band any fan of dissonant, progressive death metal should keep a close eye on. It’s an exercise in metal superstructure that succeeds beautifully on its masterful musicianship and keen ear for flow in composition. Hexrot is one of those bands that feels truly cosmic and psychedelic, far more in pure complexity than any effects pedal usage or production trickery, and I commend them for it. Formless Ruin of Oblivion is an absolute mindbender of a debut album, more complex and accomplished than many bands will achieve across full careers, and even if it’s going to take a dozen listens to really grasp, this is one journey into the incomprehensible cosmos well worth taking.
