HEXVESSEL unveil a beautiful visualiser for ‘Mother Destroyer’ as the final advance single taken from the forthcoming new album Nocturne. The seventh full-length of the enigmatic black metal shapeshifters from Finland has been chalked up for release on June 13, 2025.
HEXVESSEL comment: “The song ‘Mother Destroyer’ is about cosmic fatalism, ecological grief, and reverence for a primal feminine force”, singer and songwriter Mat “Kvohst” McNerney reveals. “It is a hymn to the sacred and desecrated goddess. The Earth as origin and oblivion, womb and grave. In the heart of every star there is a darkness.”
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With their seventh full-length Nocturne, HEXVESSEL explore the liminal spaces between light and darkness, nature and solitude on an epic album. The ever evolving and shifting Finnish band has reawakened their treasured roots in folk music and psychedelic rock as they artfully weave acoustic interludes, cosmic synths, and spectral piano into the frost-spun threads on their black metal loom.
Finnish black metal act HEXVESSEL have set their signatures under a multi-album deal with Prophecy Productions.
HEXVESSEL will release their seventh studio full-length via the label and have already been confirmed for this year’s edition of Prophecy Fest.
HEXVESSEL comment: “I am a fiercely independent minded artist and Hexvessel has its own sound, ideology and spiritual path”, vocalist and guitarist Mat ‘Kvohst’ McNerney explains. “I wanted a label that would respect, care for and nurture that wild art spirit. I have known and been friends with Martin Koller, Stefan Belda, and Prophecy for many years. We go back to the origin of Hexvessel and our first live shows abroad and they have always supported my work. I felt we would always be destined to work together in a creative aspect and I am proud to now come under the banner of a label that stands for true beauty in art and creative music.”
Prophecy Productions state: “We are all thrilled to welcome a long-time friend and outstanding artist such as Mat McNerney and Hexvessel to our roster”, the label’s founder Martin Koller writes. “Hexvessel are in many regards the perfect fit for Prophecy Productions as their highly individualistic and ever evolving music is exciting as hard to pin down and limit to only one genre.”
Listen here:
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HEXVESSEL comment on the digital single: “I actually started writing ‘Under The Lake’ as the first song for our return to black metal before the other parts of Polar Veil took shape”, mastermind Mat McNerney reveals. “Although it was always a favourite of mine, ‘Under the Lake’ still remained unfinished. This was partly due to the fact that its theme was neither polar nor set in wintertime, which meant that the song did not sit well with the rest of the album. Instead ‘Under the Lake’ is about summer hikes into the secluded and remote deep fell areas where you will find bottomless clear lakes or ‘saivo’. In Sámi beliefs, saivos (sáiva) were thought to be homes to the deceased as well as various spirits and deities. The Sámi word sáiva was used to refer to a holy lake or fell, and the spirits residing in it. It could also denote a dwelling of the deceased or anything sacred; depending on the context. A saivo, like our own world, was usually believed to exist beyond a hole at the bottom of a lake, with another identical lake upside down. To me, this is a perfect metaphor for looking at the world. There is a deeper meaning out there, if you look hard enough. ‘Under the Lake’… there is another lake. I am glad that this personal favourite of mine finally comes to see the light of day. It happens in the preternatural summer in which we announce our pact with Prophecy!”
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07 AUG 2024 Jaroměř (CZ) Brutal Assault Festival 13 AUG 2024 Manchester (UK) Rebellion 14 AUG 2024 Brighton (UK) Chalk 15 AUG 2024 Sheffield (UK) Corporation 16 AUG 2024 London (UK) Oslo 17 AUG 2024 Bristol (UK) ArcTanGent Festival 24 AUG 2024 Dūburio Sala (LT) Mėnuo Juodaragis 6/7 SEP 2024 Balve (DE) Prophecy Fest 28 SEP 2024 Heidelberg (DE) New Evil Music Festival 23 OCT 2024 Berlin (DE) Kantine am Berghain 24 OCT 2024 Leipzig (DE) Soltmann 25 OCT 2024 Bruxelles (BE) Atelier210 26 OCT 2024 Paris (FR) Backstage by the Mill 27 OCT 2024 Maastricht (NL) Samhain 28 OCT 2024 Hamburg (DE) Hafenklang 29 OCT 2024 København (DK) Stengade 30 OCT 2024 Göteborg (SE) The Abyss 31 OCT 2024 Oslo (NO) Goldie 01 NOV 2024 Jönköping (SE) The Hush Hush Club 02 NOV 2024 Stockholm (SE) Hus 7
‘A Cabin In Montana’, the glacial third single from Hexvessel’s Polar Veil album, is a paean to radical environmental advocacy and unflinching nature worship. Speaking to a “deeper sense of belonging” in the wilderness, ‘A Cabin In Montana’ draws from the eternal well of early nocturnal Black Metal, combined with hypnotic ritual chants and hypnotic synths and Hexvessel’s timeless themes of nature mysticism.
Main man Kvohst explains “You should all open this symbolic letter from a cabin in Montana. Step outside and get a deeper sense of meaning. Only then will life begin anew.”
Watch the new video, suitably cobbled together from vintage footage taken from Canadian adventurer, Tommy Tompkins’ wildlife films of the 1970s:
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Polar Veil is released on 22nd September (Svart Records).
Finland’s Hexvessel return on 22nd September (Svart Records) with their sixth album, Polar Veil, a cold, metallic hymn to the Sub Arctic North. Haunted by primal forest spirits, Mat “Kvohst” McNerney summons the ghosts of his past in a jaw-dropping, unheard-of rebirth of style and sound. At once unmistakably Hexvessel, Polar Veil is also steeped in the nocturnal atmosphere of McNerney’s past, churned in the cauldron of Black Metal, Ritual Folk Psychedelia and Doom Rock, and echoing with shivering Gothic undertones.
From their inception in 2009, Hexvessel, created by Mat McNerney as what he described to Decibel Magazine as “a free spiritual journey and a musical odyssey with no boundaries”, have captivated audiences and listeners with their evolution.
Holed up in a home-made studio in his log cabin during the winter of 2022, McNerney drew on all the fundamental elements of his music career as a shamanic shapeshifter, with only the isolation of nature’s solitude as inspiration. Painting an aura with Polar Veil which resonates with solitary reflection and themes of personal spiritual transcendence, Hexvessel’s new album is a bold statement from an artist who continues to reinvent and explore nature mysticism through music.
“Nature represents freedom, darkness and the call of the wild. Black Metal has always been at the borders of my sound and playing, at the heart of everything I do. Tradition, nature, ritual, mythology, mysticism and philosophy, along with clashing and jarring chords have always been synonymous with Hexvessel. It was natural with Polar Veil, finally now as we reach the zenith of the journey, that these influences surface to the human ear, and with the freezing cold guitar sound that the climate here demands.”
A track such as ‘Crepuscular Creatures’, with unhinged, discordant guitar chords, as bassist Ville Hakonen’s hand snakes up and down the frets, is at the more avant-garde end of the album. Long term drummer Jukka Rämänen thundering the toms like never before, as McNerney croons Scott Walker-esque lyrics, somewhere between Edith Södergran and Ted Hughes.
Whereas ‘Listen To The River’ with its ominous M.R James/Folk Horror lyrics of perilous environmental warning, featuring Ben Chisholm main collaborator and multi-instrumentalist with Chelsea Wolfe on lush, haunting keys and strings, could have appeared on Hexvessel’s sophomore album No Holier Temple, albeit with a sound of that era, progressing out of Folk.
Polar Veil features Nameless Void from Negative Plane, performing the guitar solo on the song ‘Ring’ and on ‘Older Than The Gods’, Okoi from Bølzer provides guest vocals. At first an unlikely partnership but one that makes total sense as the album deepens, and threads can be drawn that reveal the place Polar Veil is coming from.
On the process of recording Polar Veil, McNerney explains:
“I built a studio at home in the log hut on our field, surrounded by large trees, called Pine Hill, to escape from everything and everyone. Polar Veil is what a spiritual home sounds like.”
When the components of the medicine are familiar but brewed in a completely novel concoction, the resulting side effects can be deliriously intoxicating. Peer behind this Polar Veil for a breath of fresh tundra air with the video for Hexvessel’s new single ‘Older Than The Gods’. Watch it here:
Aural Aggravation 