Tuesday, 19 January 2016

Hexenjäger – Black Titan (2016) / 79%

The Baguette Doom Series pt. XV : Chasseur de sorcières


After a decent demo released last year, the French quartet from Saint-Nazaire unleashed their debut full length this week and it's a definite improvement on their previous release. 

The album, divided in two parts, is massive and flows very well. The first three songs are all around six minutes and they're quite groovy numbers. As for the the fourth title track, it's almost twenty minutes and it's more exploratory and slower. It takes like six minutes for the heaviness to start as it has a bass heavy introduction not too dissimilar from Reverend Bizarre's epic track “Anywhere Out of this World”.

Merging traditional doom
with stoner metal/rock and some subtle hints of sludge (in the instrumentation), Hexenjäger knows how to combine the crushing bass thematics of stoner with a melodic edge full of bluesy guitar aerobics and dynamic solos. Obvious fans of Cathedral and Kyuss, the sole guitar has this crunchy yet round feel and they deliver many powerful riffs helped by the solid production. The vocals of Charly are also on the forefront and they're totally enjoyable. The Frenchman has a lot of range and evolves mostly in a stoner metal vocal style but still not as rough as Ben Ward (Orange Goblin) and he definitely likes Lee Dorrian (Cathedral) but he's not as weird and out there.
I really like when this style of music doesn't mess around and keeps things relatively brief and contained, four tracks, a bit less than forty minutes is all you need sometimes. The riffs are efficicient, everything is at it rightful place and it's simply a very enjoyable first full length from these guys.

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