With roughly three months left to the disaster of a year that is 2020, I already have a good idea what my year end lists are going to look like. The “best shows” list is bound to be brief considering those ended altogether back in March. Unless an album that really knocks my socks off comes along soon, I have a pretty good idea what my album of the year is going to be, although the worst album of the year dishonor is still up for grabs. But I can tell you right now that the latest release from Hexecutor, Beyond Any Human Conception of Knowledge…, takes the trophy for the most mind numbing release of 2020.
“Mind numbing?”, you ask. “Mind numbingly good? Mind numbingly bad?” Mind numbingly good…yet mind numbing, nevertheless. I went into this album expecting a by the numbers blackened thrash outing. Instead, I got a 50 minute concept album that checked off just about every metal subgenre box you could imagine. Variety is the spice of life, but my goodness, Hexecutor takes it to the next level.
Beyond opens with two straightforward blackened thrashers, “Buried Alive with Her Silk White Dress” and “Ker Ys”. Both boast infernal riffs, old school production, and an all around evil atmosphere similar to Nifelheim, Deströyer 666, and all the other bands who married the first and second waves of black metal. From here, things take a turn for the odd.
The remaining 40ish minutes of Beyond plays like a 70s rock album: You have to listen to it as a whole to fully “get it”. If you listen to any one song on its own, you’ll be lost. All of the remaining tracks are lengthy, clocking in roughly between 5 and 7 minutes each. “Eternal Impertinence” kicks this stretch off. It’s one of the album’s darkest tracks, beginning as a pure black metal song, then switching into thrash overload.
Then there’s “Tiger of the Seven Seas”. This oddly traditional sounding song sounds like a blackened Uli Jon Roth era Scorpions. You read that correctly. As if that isn’t odd enough, “Belzebuth’s Apocryphal Mark” begins as a lethal neck snapper, before introducing us to the micro niche of blackened power metal. Yes, the halfway mark of this epic has Manowar and Running Wild written all over it. Is your head spinning yet?
A folksy, medieval instrumental serves as a palette cleanser (“Brecheliant”) before the album’s two last tracks take us back to the black/thrash which opened it up (“Danse Macabre”, “Kroez En Vossen”). It should also be noted that the guitar work throughout is distinctly different than what’s par the course for the genre. While the riffs largely stay close to old school black and/or thrash metal, the solos lie somewhere between the NWOBHM and the late Criss Oliva of Savatage.
Is the very mention of Nifelheim and Uli Jon Roth in the same review “mind numbing” to you? Then wait until you hear Beyond Any Human Conception of Knowledge…. Will this become a cult masterpiece of the 2020s? Only time will tell. For now, it’s definitely beyond any human conception of metal.
8 out of 10
Label: Dying Victims Productions
Genre: Black/Thrash Metal
For fans of: Diabolic Night, Bütcher, Nifelheim