When We Are Death is the latest offering from Tampere’s Hexvessel and it’s a chilled-out and relaxed listen that has a stunning hypnotic quality to it underneath.
The music is atmospheric and just draws you in; the simplicity to it at times works in Hexvessel’s favour as it helps make the songs feel more accessible somehow, showing that they don’t need massive complex sections to leave an impression on you. Indeed, some of the songs have these little repeating lines that will inevitably get stuck in your head for days on end and you’ll soon find yourself humming along to some of the songs. A particularly good example of this is third song Cosmic Truth – the song itself is quietly moving as the piano introduction sets the scene and the vocals are added, they add more ambience until the chorus gets going – which essentially consists of one repeating line that leads into a small bridge afterwards, and it’s just hypnotically catchy.
When We Are Death is a largely great album, although one element where it is a little lacking is just the variety from song to song. A considerable chunk of tracks are stylistically very similar to one another, which is somewhat disappointing because it feels like Hexvessel aren’t quite reaching their full potential. However as a whole, When We Are Death is good listen and if you’re into more psychedelic rock a-la Jess And The Ancient Ones, you’ll not want to miss this.
7/10
