It wasn't the first time Hexvessel played in France, or even in Paris: they were at the l'Homme Sauvage festival in 2018 and toured in 2014 with... Alcest (they've grown up a lot since then, well, you haven't gotten any younger either). Nevertheless, the appearance of Mat McNerney's psychedelic folk project, which mutated with the recent Polar Veil and its stronger doom and black metal roots, remains a rarity. Arriving at the Backstage by the Mill, one thinks of another British artist named Matt (Howden this time, a.k.a Sieben), more confidential, who played in Paris last week for the first time in 17 years: long absences don't always help to attract a large audience and, with competition from The Old Dead Tree who were playing at the Maroquinerie at the same time, Hexvessel's show is not exactly sold out. So let's thank Garmonbozia for staging this unique evening, and hope this doesn't compromise the band's chances of returning to France in the next decade...
SUM OF R
Before we wander Hexvessel's cold polar nights, Sum of R set the mood. The trio led by Swiss bassist Reto Mäder has never really been able to fit into narrow boxes: doom, noise, drone... The music, once instrumental, now has lyrics since the arrival of Marko Neuman in 2019 and the album Lahbryce released in 2022, which Mäder considers a new departure for his formerly solo project.
The voice is another layer grafted onto the band's hypnotic formula, where loops repeat themselves to the point of trance, mutating from abysmal growl to lament to the point where you wonder how many beings actually live in this Marko Neuman's body. It's heavy, it's dark: they've got our full attention. The singer, with his almost grunge look, hides behind his mane and regularly finds himself prostrated on the floor, while rumors spread through the crowd that there might even be a drummer there, in the shadows and thick smoke. If you have to see it to believe it, then we have our doubts, although the beast was clearly audible!
Sum of R brought us some surprises: apart from Borderline and Hymn for the Formless, we're only treated to new material. However, the songs are long enough to give us time to grips with them (unless we simply end up trapped by the creeping riffs and hallucinatory synth strings), to the point where they eventually become so familiar. Psychedelic ritual, cathartic funeral, poisonous threats... Sum of R is all these things at once, and it abolishes realities. Fascinating live, the band gave us a fine preview of the incantations to come... we can't wait!
HEXVESSEL
Hexvessel's mutation can be appreciated as soon as the band takes to the stage: adieu, cool little hats, McNerney (also lead singer of Grave Pleasures) and his comrades look like cursed monks or depressed ghouls. Black togas, pallid faces: the black metal influences that have always been a determining factor in the singer's work have now been fully taken on board by Hexvessel. We owe them the coldness, the thick fog that the guitars bring down on the Backstage by the Mill, but also that scent of wild, mysterious spaces.
Dark folk, doom, black metal: Hexvessel succeeds in its alchemy and, rather than switching from one to the other, mixes all these ingredients in its cauldron to offer a rather unprecedented personal sound, certainly thick and oppressive but also airy and untamed. The band's greatest strength remains the voice of its singer, Mat McNerney, who imposes a respectful silence. We've come to listen attentively to this eerie storyteller and his sometimes dreamy, sometimes exalted laments. He is monolithic on stage, leaving trivialities such as “looking alive” or “moving more than is strictly necessary” to his musicians. The ceremonious atmosphere is that of a wake, and you know us: we say it with great delight. We then allow ourselves to be willingly transported into this disturbing 'society of spectres', to borrow a title from Grave Pleasures.
The setlist is almost entirely devoted to Polar Veil, with the exception of Black Mountain Poet, which heralded the album's arrival at the time, two more recent tracks (Under the Lake and Spirit Masked Wolf), the seasonally appropriate cover of The Misfits' Halloween, and Phaedra, a magnificent survivor from the Kindred era whose weight and hypnotic power have the good taste to blend perfectly with the atmosphere. Mystical, mournful and poetic, the performance borrows both from the menacing slowness of the grand guignol and from timeless ancestral myths. To the legends McNerney evokes, we return once again to the most elusive of them all: the drummer, whom we sometimes think we glimpse. There are whispers that he does exist, and we can hear him very well indeed, but it's another matter entirely to be able to make out his silhouette in the smoke. While cryptozoologists are still debating its existence, we learn that it's Jukka Rämänen, also behind the drums of Sum of R... Well, well, what a shy animal!
If the room isn't full, the gathered assembly is captivated. Hexvessel is a dark secret, fiercely protected from the bright lights and bustle of Place Pigalle. The Finns have imposed their own temporality, their own ceremonial. We return to the real noisy world with a head full of darkness and images evocative of the dark stories we tell ourselves by the fireside in lands covered by night and snow.
