Year: 2025
Label: Prophecy

I’ll be honest: prior to this album, I’d heard maybe one song by Hexvessel, so this review isn’t exactly based on an in-depth knowledge of their past discography. But then again, up until recently, the band played some kind of psychedelic folk music, before abruptly veering off towards black metal on, unless I’m mistaken, 2023’s Polar Veil.

My first serious touch with the band was a at a recent gig (Melancholy Mass in Helsinki). I was expecting some kind of odd black metal influenced psych folk thing. Imagine my surprise when, musically, the set was overwhelmingly dominated by a very classic black metal sound. ‘Twas enough to seal the deal on buying this CD from the merch table.

My first impression upon listening to this was a combination of Bergtatt era Ulver and Finnish folk/black metal act Vermilia. Now, before you get all excited, I have to tell you that I was gravely mistaken. On second listen, I found essentially no Ulver on Nocturne. A bit of Vermilia, though.

But the other, actually the primary association that surfaced on the second listen is pretty illustrious too: Primordial.

So, imagine this. Compositionally vaguely folk-style music, played in a rather traditionally Nordic black metal style with sawing tremolo picked riffs. Mostly slower to mid-tempo. Eerie, ghostly, dreamy passages of melodies with piano, violin and synthesizer. Mostly, clean vocals – and this is where the Primordial element kicks strongest. Vocalist Mat McNerney brings to mind a somewhat less charismatic A.A. Nemtheanga. Throw in a bit of Aspera Hiems Symfonia era Arcturus, and you’ve got a pretty good picture of what Nocturne is like.

Apparently this album started out as a commissioned piece for Roadburn Festival, a set to be performed at the festival. As such, it is not surprising that Nocturne does not particularly strongly lift up individual tracks, but focuses on presenting an evocative, atmospheric whole. Which is a nice way of saying that there are few peaks in the hour-long set.

A few, though. A Dark & Graceful Wilderness stands out lyrically: it riffs on Aleksis Kivi’s classic poem Metsämiehen laulu, which has been used also by, for example, Pyhä Kuolema and Freud Marx Engels & Jung (to the tune of Paranoid, no less!). The dark, haunting vocal melodies fit this lyrical variation of a classic. The track after it, Spirit Masked Wolf, is another peak, with some ice-cold black metal riffing and beautifully bold vocals by McNerney. This actually reminds me of a less punked-up version of Live By The Sword – there’s the same kind of sharp, mountainous majesty in the guitars.

And lack of standout tracks is not really a flaw in this case. Nocturne is a journey, a nocturnal reverie that’s best taken in as a whole. (And, as an aside, it’s in this atmospheric aspect that I find a kinship with early Arcturus, who I mentioned before.)

The version I’m reviewing is a two-disc hardcover digibook version, which features on the second disc the aforementioned Roadburn concert. Minus intro and one track, it is essentially the same as the album proper. This makes sitting through the entire set in one go a bit of a heavy task. The sound of the live disc is good, though, and the band are in fine form, so it’s not exactly a throwaway thing. But for the casual Hexvessel listener, a demographic I group myself in, the single-disc version probably better value for money.

This is a nice artifact, though. The cover looks impressive in this blown-up size, and the book itself features some beautiful photography of the band in wintry settings, as well as from Roadburn. So for fans, collectors and adorers of pretty things, this digibook is definitely worth the price.

Overall, Nocturne is a highly atmospheric piece of dreamy, eerie, nocturnal… eh, black-ish metal. Atmospheric post-black metal, maybe? The instrumentation is pretty much pure black metal, but the vocals lead Hexvessel in a different direction. The end result isn’t, as outlined above, exactly unique, but certainly uncommon. And maybe not exactly something the cuppa of yer average black metal fan. But people who love classic Nordic black metal and like to venture outside the box should definitely check this out.

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