Bandcamp Hex A.D. have been working the Norwegian doom-progressive corner for long enough that Surgical Cuts in the Cosmos, their new album on Apollon Records (digital May 22, CD June 5), arrives more as catalogue continuity than as new-band announcement. Three years after Delightful Sharp Edges, the band’s identity is settled: prog-rock structures, classic-heavy-metal songwriting bones, stoner-rock fuzz textures, old-school doom weight, and a willingness to let any of those four lineages take over for a track at a time. Seven pieces across forty-six minutes, the longest stretching to almost ten minutes.
The album opens with “Reintroducing a Bit of Heat” at six minutes, the album’s setting-of-terms cut. The band’s vocabulary is clear from the first riff — saturated mid-fuzz guitars, knurrig bass underneath, melodic clean vocals with rough texture sitting forward in the mix, Joona-Hassinen-adjacent live-room drum sound without the modern processed click. “A Bloody Mess” at three and thirty-six is the album’s tightest cut, almost punk in its compactness. “Black Rope Candy” at five and twenty-five pulls the band’s prog side forward, with extended instrumental passages between the verses.
The Centre
“Perfectly Fatal” at six and twenty-four sits in the album’s modern-mixed territory — sharper transients, more clinical instrument separation, the rhythm section locked tightest of any cut on the record. “P.I.G.” at nine and fifty-three is the album’s centrepiece: long-form construction, structural rotation between dense walls and atmospheric breaks, lead-guitar work that gets the most extended showcase on the album.
“The Devil Makes Work for Idle Hands” at four and fifty-two is the album’s most overtly stoner-rock-leaning piece — heaviest single riff on the record, fuzz-bass-foundation, vocals at their roughest. “Death of a Thousand Cuts” closes the album at nine and twenty-three, returning to the long-form structural mode of “P.I.G.” but with a brighter palette: clean guitars with chorus pedal, samples-leaning drum sound that pushes the album toward its most modern-mixed production decision. The closing track is the album’s most polarising cut — what the band gain in spaciousness on the verses they lose in instrument-mix integration on the choruses.
The Production Frame
The production sits in the dry, mid-focused territory that Apollon Records’ broader Norwegian-heavy-rock catalogue tends toward, with track-by-track variations in processing approach. The first half of the album leans live-and-organic (rough vocals up front, room-mic drums, mid-stacked guitars); the back half pushes into more modern-mixed territory (programmed-leaning drums on the closer, sample-supported snare, sharper transient processing). That production split is the album’s main inconsistency — Hex A.D. work both modes competently, but the album sounds like it sequenced two different production approaches rather than committing to one.
The reservations are honest. The cleaner mixed cuts (“Perfectly Fatal,” parts of “Death of a Thousand Cuts”) sit slightly too sterile for the band’s doom-prog identity; the warmer live-feeling tracks (“Reintroducing a Bit of Heat,” “A Bloody Mess”) have stronger low-mid frequency stacking that limits string definition. What works is the songwriting commitment across the seven tracks — the four-genre cross (prog/classic-metal/stoner/doom) is consistent in vocabulary even when the production approach shifts.
Seven tracks across forty-six minutes. Production decisions vary by track in ways that signal either deliberate sequencing or different recording-session origins: the opener and “A Bloody Mess” lean live-room and warm with rough vocal placement and natural drum sound; “Perfectly Fatal” and “Death of a Thousand Cuts” push into modern-mixed territory with sharper transients, sample-leaning drum processing, and more clinical instrument separation; the long-form pieces (“P.I.G.,” parts of “Black Rope Candy”) sit between the two modes. Guitars carry consistent mid-fuzz saturation; bass moves between articulate independent voice and low-mid foundation. Vocals (predominantly clean with rough texture, occasional spoken-word passages on “P.I.G.”) sit forward in the mix and consistently intelligible. Mastering loudness varies — restrained on the warmer cuts, more contemporary brick-walled on the heavier and the closing tracks. Frequency stacking in the low-mids is the recurring trade-off across the runtime; the cleaner mixed tracks accumulate it less but sacrifice the band’s organic identity.
Standout tracks: P.I.G. for the nine-and-a-half-minute centrepiece’s structural rotation and extended lead-guitar showcase. Reintroducing a Bit of Heat for the opener’s live-room setting-of-terms. The Devil Makes Work for Idle Hands for the heaviest single riff on the album.
Worth your time if you appreciate Norwegian doom-progressive that takes its four-genre lineage cross (prog/classic-metal/stoner/doom) seriously and isn’t afraid to let any of them take over for a track. The production split between live-and-organic and modern-mixed approaches is the album’s main inconsistency, but the songwriting holds together across the seven tracks and the catalogue continuity with Delightful Sharp Edges is clean.
