As if the title wasn’t plain enough, the cover art of Rhymes For The Hated promises you crushing metal, and Hexagram deliver on that promise many times over. Fifteen tracks of python-thick riffs and bellowed fury, it’s a relentless assault on the ears that puts a number of more established bands in the field to shame.
What makes that even more impressive is that Hexagram are an unsigned band, and Rhymes For The Hated is an independent release. I know this for a fact, as I was on the judging panel for the battle of the bands they won came second in the summer of 2007, despite having lost their drummer two weeks before the final. The level of professionalism and commitment is matched by diamond-sharp musical skills, and by the pile-driver intensity of the songs on Rhymes For The Hated. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill local metal band. Not by a long stretch.
The one thing you could justifiably criticise Hexagram for is sounding a little too like their influences. Everything about Rhymes For The Hated will remind you of Pantera; Miller’s Dimebag-isms on guitar and his furious Anselmo roar are inescapable, and at their most obvious on “Run Like Hell”. But Hexagram are not just a tribute band; the tone may be familiar, but the material is all original, not to mention impeccably produced.
And there’s many more influences mixed in, if you have the ear to recognise them. Put it this way, if you were bang into your thrash metal around the early nineties, you’ll hear hints of all your old favourites in Hexagram’s work, from the Southern bludgeon of Crowbar to the proto-metalcore of early Corrosion Of Conformity (on “Souls of the Dead”, for example). Closer to the present day, Rhymes For The Hated’s rhythms and song structures bring to mind the incredible mechanical power of American Head Charge, albeit without the samples and synths.
It’s the rhythms that are the core of Hexagram’s appeal. Like every decent three-piece rock band from Cream onwards, drums and bass and guitars are working in close unity, all playing the same riff at once – and it’s a trick that never loses its force when done well. While you could argue that a little more variety might have allowed it to breathe a little better, there isn’t a weak song on Rhymes For The Hated. You’ll get to the end of “Two Broken Legs” and expect them to be all out of ideas, but they just keep on coming like an angry drunk in a steamroller.
Hexagram’s utter avoidance of trends in modern metal is their strong point, but it will work against them to an extent; they’re that little bit to close to their sources to be a fully viable signing, if that’s what they’re after. But down in the songwriting trenches - at the level where many freshman and sophomore signed bands are still struggling - Rhymes For The Hated clears the opposition like a claymore mine packed with razor-wire. With some nurture and A&R investment, Hexagram could wipe the floor with the four-word-name-and-fingerless-gloves bands… do whatever you can to give them the chance.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: Hexagram, metal, metalcore, Rhymes For The Hated, Southern metal, thrash
