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Artist......: Hexer
Album.......: Cosmic Doom Ritual
Year........: 2017
Genre.......: Metal
Type........: Album
Label.......: Independent
Language....: English
Source......: WEB/FLAC (16bit)
Quality.....: 728kbps / 44.1 kHz / Stereo
Tracks......: 3 tracks
Playtime....: 00:36:08
Size........: 188.0 MiB
R.Date......: 2026-10-03
S.Date......: 2017-04-14
Url.........: https://open.qobuz.com/album/shjr12hn4t2sc
01. Merkaba 12:42
02. Pearl Snake 12:30
03. Black Lava Flow 10:56
"Doom metal has come a long way since the early work of
Candlemass and Witchfinder General. Many a more or less
successful fusion has been undertaken, most notably the
very successful doom/death mish-mash, but also other
mixed class genres have had their successful
representatives. Hexer belong to this latter category,
since on Cosmic Doom Ritual they nominally play a
combination of black and doom metal.
In all honesty, the black metal is quite toned down.
There are the odd riffs, and a few faster-paced parts,
but there are other genres filtering into the mix that
take up a lot more space. The basic musical landscape
consists of slow, slow doom metal, with bizarre melodies
played on massively down tuned guitars, coupled with
stoner and experimental stuff. The distortion is
crushing, sometimes generating a noisy industrial vibe.
An analogue synthesizer and a pile of effects add a
healthy dose of surrealism and atmospheric insanity.
The mostly low tempo doom brings immediate thoughts of
Esoteric. Hexer rarely go as slow as the British
masters, but with the heavy psychedelia going on almost
constantly the connection is still impossible not to
make. The German origin and the blackish vocals,
complete with a certain desperate sound, also make it
difficult to forgo mentioning Bethlehem. These
references only go so far, to be sure, because Hexer
definitely have their own sound.
To be more concrete, the regular employment of oriental
melodies and rhythms mix things up quite a bit, and this
reviewer can't really think of any other doom act that
have gone quite this route. A huge bonus is that these
influences are supremely well integrated into the music,
and not just tacked on in the form of interludes or
(shudder) intros. You cannot listen to "Pearl Snake"
without forming some vague notion of a Persian belly
dancer performing her craft in the middle of the night
on a decrepit Ironclad warship, floating on a river of
black oil. Or maybe you can, but only if you lack any
faculty of imagination.
The album has its ups and downs, as most albums do.
Sometimes the heavy experimentation takes over in a way
that makes the music lose its way, when it coincides
with less melodic passages. There are far worse examples
of such meandering, though, and overall Cosmic Doom
Ritual holds together nicely. The oppressive atmosphere
the album evokes is partly a typically doom metal one,
well known from Skepticism and the aforementioned
Esoteric, and partly something alien and refreshingly
new.
Cosmic Doom Ritual is a brilliant addition to the still
not wholly overexposed doom metal genre" archaic triad.
"Definitely an album which will take multiple listens
(and re-listens) to fully unpack, Cosmic Doom Ritual is
one hell of a debut album, from a band with a clear and
uncompromising vision." - NO CLEAN SINGING
"Three tracks and 34-minutes of cosmic doom metal was
just what the doctor ordered. Hexer's surprisingly
tactful use of melody, nuance and feel drifts beneath
cataclysmic slabs of sludge and doom, creating an
intriguing sonic landscape that retains the listener's
interest for the majority." - Angry Metal Guy
Not to be confused with other bands with same name.
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Hexer/3540402132