New album, “Teufelskult”, out on October 31st!
The work of one selfsame Häxär, concurrently of Ernte, Häxär are a lone torch of Swiss black metal. Now, after two albums in as many years, Häxär present their third album of turn-of-the-millennium nastiness: Teufelskult. Ripped raw and ripping, Teufelskult possesses that dead-but-alive electricity that so earmarked many a Moonfog release as Y2K approached. One could erroneously describe it as “industrialized” or even “robotic,” but there’s indeed bleeding humanity coursing through every treble-drenched note of Häxär’s third attack. More accurately, perhaps, this singed-circuits style of black metal is NECROTIC to the core: harshing out something otherwise polished or polishing something unremittingly harsh, either way arriving at the vintage antagonism of Teufelskult. Above all, the songwriting itself is second-wave classicism sprinkled with a touch of the hooliganism of the modern Teutonic school, or maybe an Alpine analog of Mütiilation’s idiom-defining Black Millenium (Grimly Reborn). These references serve not to undercut Häxär’s creativity, but rather to underscore the rarefied territory in which Teufelskult is traveling. Get lost like it’s 1999!
