Sixteen people, maybe fewer, stand before an empty stage in a cool, high-ceilinged club that can hold up to 300. There are distractions everywhere: Retro video games line the walls, and the empty spaces between them are covered with lame photocopies of old punk and metal concert posters. There’s a pool table that no one ever uses. A bartop screen frozen on some best paying online casino splash page. Shabby Halloween costumes that were probably worn once. And a hoarder’s galore of other junk that caters the cavernous space in Boise, Idaho—known as The Shredder—to ragamuffins and few others.
None of this matters, though, to the slim group of loners inside the decaying premises on a weekday night in late November. They’ve turned out to witness a shooting star of a live-music experience, one that will remained etched into their minds for years to come.
Without saying a word, four guys from Denmark—dressed in black, naturally—step out from the shadows and onto the stage. They get comfortable with their instruments and check in with each other. The background music dies and strobe lights come alive. Suddenly, the establishment is transformed into a haunted house. The band, named Hexis, take the spectators completely out of their element.
Suddenly, blisteringly loud noise erupts. Like the strobe lights, it will continue bludgeoning the onlookers and performers with equal measure, nonstop, for the next 40 minutes. The musicians—and, for that matter, their songs—will be barely distinguishable throughout the entire experience. But to those who savor the group’s particular flavor of blackened hardcore, this concert will scratch a very hard-to-reach itch.
Dissimilar sounding as they may be, Hexis seem to have taken an important tip from forefathers like Isis and Meshuggah. Each began by crossing a couple of music genres—post-metal and sludge, and progressive metal and groove, respectively—as a starting point. From there on out, they let their sound take on a life of its own, then shared it with fans regardless of whether they’d stay along for the ride.
Hexis coalesced in 2010, its members obsessed with inflential Franch band Celeste and the then-conflicting subgenres of hardcore punk and black metal. Ever since, the entity led by vocalist Filip and bassist Luca Mele have not-so-quietly played 1,114 shows—yes, they’re counting—from the far reaches of New Zealand to Nepal to the Faroe Islands. Along for the ride are a guitarist and drummer, although those working musicians are apt to change from time to time.
In late January, with ears still ringing from two months prior, we contact Hexis to try to make more sense of why their show resonated so much.
“When we started the band, honestly, it was not like I had huge goals or anything,” shaggy-haired frontman Filip discloses during a video-conference call. “I just remember I really wanted to release music on vinyl and play anywhere outside of Denmark—Germany, Sweden, wherever. And Roskilde (Festival) … those were my three goals. I didn’t expect us to turn into a band that will play 200 shows a year all around the globe.
“When Luca and I first started touring all around the world, we lost a lot of money doing it,” Filip further recalls. “So it was kind of like, ‘Ah, I love to do this, but how will I make it work in the long run?’ Now, we go to a lot of these places and everything actually, most of the time, looks pretty OK economically.”
It’s good to hear that Hexis isn’t starving for encouragement. Three LPs and five EPs deep, their fanbase is still of modest size. It’s not just the band’s lineups that have rotated. Filip and Mele have also bounced their project from one label to another. That probably didn’t do any favors for their last effort, 2022’s Aeternum, (Debermur Morti Productions), a blistering diamond in the rough that pretty much flew under the radar.
Indeed, while more positive feedback is certainly warranted, and almost certainly destined to come, the dearth of it thus far doesn’t pose a Hexis-tential threat. The band is still supporting Aeternum, in part by incrementally releasing videos related to its 12 songs. To that end, the band played all but a few selections from Aeternum on their latest U.S. tour, only peppering in one or two oldies (plus Hexis’ contribution to a split with Danish brethren Telos).
“I feel like the songwriting on that last album is so much stronger than anything we’ve done in the past,” Filip attests, finding much agreement from his interviewer. “I feel like it’s the first record I did with Hexis that I’m proud of. Everything before that one has always been something I didn’t like too much.”
Lest it need be stated outright, Filip is as direct and hard-hitting as his band’s paint-peeling music. He openly admits that he hasn’t been happy with his vocals till now, still has trouble writing lyrics and—somehow—feels more connected with the audience when he doesn’t talk.
“When we started this band, honestly, we were not a super good live band,” Filip admits.
Enter those ubiquitous strobes.
“We started using those two years after we started, because we wanted to have a very intense live show,” he explains. “Having the strobe lights was like playing a computer game and using a cheat code. Nowadays, we can actually get away with delivering a decent performance without them—but they still make everything better.”
Call the strobe lights a crutch—or, better yet, don’t—Filip alludes to a future for Hexis that is, so to speak, even brighter.
“I even have ideas for some newer lighting we want to try out,” he says. “I’m trying to [adapt] it for a huge festival stage.”
Could Hexis become that infectious? Whatever the case, at least some of us begging for more.
Photo courtesy of Hexis.
Stay on top of Hexis tour dates here. Shop for Hexis goods here.
