Published: December 19, 2024

Wow and holy fuck! This album fucking rules! And it hits a bit home for me. Hailing from both Michigan and Massachusetts, Hekseblad came to me via Hypnotic Dirge Records from Portugal. Imagine my surprise while doing research about the band and album that Bruxa not only hails from my home state of Michigan, but he is from Durand, about 50 miles from my hometown of Caro, Michigan! Neat! The geography lesson is out of the way, so let’s get into the music contained on their first full length album, “Kaer Morhen”.

What we have here is very raw, yet atmospheric as hell Black Metal. Frosk seems to be a master of all of the instruments he used during the recording of this fine album. The guitars are at times fast and raw, and dissonant and sublime at others. The bass comes through very well and the drums are great. I have no idea if the drums are programmed, but if they are they sound very natural. There are some slow acoustic passages that are just beautiful and some amazing keyboard work. There are some folk melodies here and there too. The album has a very early 90’s Black Metal sound, but with a better production, which I will get to later.

Bruxa’s vocals are, and I hate to use this term here, grim. He has an excellent Black Metal sneer to his vocals, and I like that. His pacing and cadence are amazing and as brutal as the music is, his vocals are a thing to behold. Is there such a thing as brutal beauty? Yes, there is. In his vocals. Most or all of the lyrics are about The Witcher series, but as they are not included in the booklet, I can’t comment on them as much as I’d like. I love The Witcher. I have never read the novels, but I played 100 or so hours of The Witcher 3 on my PS5 and watched the Netflix series until they had that awful casting change!

The production is great, and the overall sound is brilliant. I love this kind of raw Black Metal that has a good production.

The cover art is absolutely perfect. Aghy R. Purakusuma painted it and it’s reminiscent of Necrolord’s art style. It’s all done in hues of purple and black and shows a scene from The Witcher where I assume Geralt Of Rivia is in the mountains, horse by his side, looking over a castle nestled into a forested mountain range. Very, very good artwork!

“Kaer Morhen” is an album that is so good that it will easily make my Top 10 of 2024 list this year. The band should be fucking proud of this album and if any of you readers are into Black Metal in the slightest, pick this up now! I hope we don’t have to wait too long for another album. I see both members have numerous other bands which due to the professionalism shown on this album I’m sure all are as great too.

As always, I ask my readers to support the bands, labels and artists buy buying the physical copies of the albums you love.