Hexvessel: Finnish Band Explores Ritual Soundscapes in New Album ‘Nocturne’

Finnish band Hexvessel is set to release their seventh studio album, ‘Nocturne,’ on June 13, 2025, through Prophecy Productions. The album promises a blend of black metal, folk, and psychedelic rock elements, reflecting the band’s evolving musical journey. In anticipation of the album, Hexvessel released the official music video for ‘A Dark & Graceful Wilderness’ on March 19, 2025. The video features drone footage by NecrosHorns and additional visuals by frontman Mat McNerney, edited by Ville Hakonen. This single serves as a representation of the album’s diverse musical influences, ranging from black metal to minimal synths.

Hexvessel’s partnership with Prophecy Productions was formalized in July 2024, as announced by the band and the label. The agreement encompasses multiple albums, beginning with ‘Nocturne.’ Frontman Mat McNerney expressed that the collaboration was rooted in a longstanding relationship with Prophecy’s team, including founder Martin Koller and Stefan Belda, dating back to Hexvessel’s early international performances. McNerney emphasized the label’s alignment with the band’s artistic vision and its commitment to nurturing creative music. Prophecy Productions, known for supporting genre-defying artists, welcomed Hexvessel as a fitting addition to their roster, highlighting the band’s individualistic and evolving musical style.

Hexvessel Origins

Hexvessel was formed in 2009 by British musician Mat McNerney, also known as Kvohst, after his relocation to Finland. Prior to founding Hexvessel, McNerney had established himself in the extreme metal scene through his work with bands such as Dødheimsgard and Code. Seeking to explore a different musical direction, he assembled a group of musicians in Finland who shared his vision for a project that would blend elements of folk, psychedelic rock, and black metal. The founding lineup included Jukka Rämänen on drums, Kimmo Helén handling keyboards and strings, and other collaborators who contributed to the band’s early sound.

Hexvessel’s debut album, ‘Dawnbearer,’ was released in 2011 through Svart Records, introducing their unique “psychedelic forest folk” style. This was followed by ‘No Holier Temple’ in 2012, which garnered critical acclaim and led to nominations for two Emma Gala (Finnish Grammy) awards. The band’s subsequent albums, including ‘When We Are Death’ (2016), ‘All Tree’ (2019), and ‘Kindred’ (2020), showcased their evolving sound, incorporating a range of influences while maintaining a cohesive artistic identity.

Throughout their career, Hexvessel has maintained a consistent core lineup, with McNerney on vocals and guitars, Helén on keyboards and strings, and Rämänen on drums. In 2019, Ville Hakonen joined the band as bassist, solidifying the current formation. The band’s music often explores themes of nature, mysticism, and the human experience, reflecting McNerney’s interest in the spiritual and the esoteric.

Mat McNerney Before Hexvessel

Before founding Hexvessel in 2009, British-born musician Mat McNerney had already cemented a reputation within Europe’s avant-garde and black metal circuits under the moniker Kvohst. His early tenure in the Norwegian experimental black metal outfit Dødheimsgard was particularly formative; there, he contributed vocals to the 2007 album ‘Supervillain Outcast,’ a release noted for its dissonant structures and industrial leanings. McNerney’s involvement in Dødheimsgard coincided with his work in Code, another boundary-defying project that fused bleak atmospherics with philosophical lyricism. Both projects placed McNerney at the intersection of extremity and experimentation—a position he would later reinterpret through entirely different sonic and thematic frameworks with Hexvessel.

In parallel with these endeavors, McNerney co-founded Beastmilk in Helsinki in 2010, which would later evolve into Grave Pleasures. Drawing heavily from post-punk and deathrock traditions, Beastmilk diverged sharply from his black metal origins, though it retained his signature interest in existential themes and psychological tension. This trajectory through varied genres revealed an artist constantly reconfiguring his medium—one as interested in ritualistic cadence as he was in melody or aggression.

His move from the United Kingdom to Finland, however, signaled more than a geographic relocation; it initiated a conceptual and spiritual redirection. Immersed in Finland’s forested landscapes, pre-Christian heritage, and shamanic traditions, McNerney began developing the foundations of what would become Hexvessel. The project emerged not as a genre exercise but as a vessel—by design—for his growing interest in animism, ecological mysticism, and liminal states of consciousness. Finland’s terrain and seasonal extremes offered the backdrop against which McNerney’s artistic vision matured, shifting his focus from the urban and existential to the elemental and ancestral. In Hexvessel, this personal shift materialised into a sound that echoed both ancient folk traditions and the spectral sensibilities he had cultivated in previous projects.

Philosophical and Aesthetic Ethos

At the heart of Hexvessel’s artistic identity lies a commitment to nature as more than landscape—rather, as a sentient presence capable of transformation, memory, and metaphysical insight. This ethos, consistently present throughout the band’s discography, draws heavily on animist philosophies, pre-Christian Finnish folk traditions, and personal spiritual inquiry. Frontman McNerney has described Hexvessel not merely as a band but as a conduit for “a spiritual journey,” framing music as a ritual act that restores forgotten connections between human and environment, sound and silence, body and forest. Their work engages with the idea that natural elements possess consciousness—a perspective rooted in Northern European pagan cosmologies, where trees, rivers, and stones are not inert matter but active witnesses.

Throughout Hexvessel’s catalog, references to the Kalevala—the Finnish national epic—surface in both lyrical content and visual design. Songs invoke archetypes like the shamanic wanderer or the forest spirit, using runic meter and elemental metaphors to evoke liminality and otherworldliness. This symbolic vocabulary aligns with the band’s visual presentation: album covers often depict organic textures, sacred geometry, and hand-drawn occult motifs that reinforce their entanglement with esoteric and folkloric frameworks. In live settings, these elements coalesce into an immersive experience; stage designs often include natural artifacts such as bones, branches, and ritual objects intended to collapse the distance between performer and participant.

McNerney has articulated this worldview in interviews, often citing a desire to oppose modernity’s disenchanted view of the world. “We are trying to reconnect with something older, something that was lost when our ancestors were driven out of the forests and into churches,” he once remarked, positioning Hexvessel in deliberate contrast to institutional religion and mechanised culture. This tension—between archaic reverence and contemporary estrangement—animates their music with a dual purpose: it is both a reclamation and a resistance. The band’s philosophical posture is not aesthetic window dressing; it functions as the conceptual architecture behind every compositional and performative choice.

‘Nocturne’: A New Exploration in Sound

Hexvessel’s seventh studio album, ‘Nocturne,’ presents a multifaceted exploration of sound and theme. The album comprises ten tracks: ‘Opening,’ ‘Sapphire Zephyrs,’ ‘Inward Landscapes,’ ‘A Dark & Graceful Wilderness,’ ‘Spirit Masked Wolf,’ ‘Nights Tender Reckoning,’ ‘Mother Destroyer,’ ‘Concealed Descent,’ ‘Unworld,’ and ‘Phoebus.’ These compositions blend elements of black metal, folk, and psychedelic rock, reflecting the band’s diverse musical influences.

Guest musicians contribute to the album’s rich soundscape. Saara Nevalainen provides vocals, Yusaf Vicotnik Parvez (DHG/Dødheimsgard) offers lead vocals on ‘Unworld,’ and Juho Vanhanen (Oranssi Pazuzu) adds backing vocals on ‘Phoebus.’ The album was produced by Mat McNerney and Jaime Gomez Arellano, recorded at Pine Hill Studio in Akaa, Finland, and mixed and mastered at Orgone Studios in Porto, Portugal.

‘Nocturne’ will be available in multiple formats. Standard editions include a Digipak CD and a gatefold 2-LP in black vinyl. Limited editions feature a gatefold 2-LP in arctic pearl vinyl (limited to 500 copies) and a deluxe bundle comprising a gatefold 2-LP in white/black marble vinyl, a 2-CD hardcover book with a 36-page artbook, a 7” single with exclusive tracks, a Din A2 poster, a patch, and a hand-signed photo, all packaged in a Hexvessel cloth bag (limited to 500 copies).

The deluxe edition includes a bonus CD titled ‘Music for Gloaming: A Nocturne by the Hexvessel Folk Assembly,’ featuring live recordings from their 2024 Roadburn Festival performance.

The Aesthetics and Material Craft

The visual presentation of ‘Nocturne’ highlights Hexvessel’s enduring interest in physicality, mysticism, and symbolic density. More than just packaging, the artwork and accompanying materials serve as integral components of the album’s conceptual framework. The cover art, created by Benjamin König, features imagery that aligns with the band’s thematic focus on nature and the esoteric.

The deluxe edition of ‘Nocturne’—produced in collaboration with Prophecy Productions—includes a gatefold 2-LP pressed in white and black marble vinyl, housed within a cloth bag bearing the Hexvessel insignia. This edition also comprises a 36-page hardcover artbook, a 7-inch vinyl single of exclusive material, a hand-signed photograph, a woven patch, and a Din A2-format poster. The presentation consciously echoes the material culture of ritual: tactile, layered, and deliberately resistant to the disposability of digital music consumption.

The visual language of ‘Nocturne’ departs from the earth-toned, nature-based aesthetics of Hexvessel’s earlier releases in favor of a stark monochromatic design. The cover artwork features a spectral, skull-headed figure rendered in soft brush strokes, dispersing a trail of particles over a cluster of small, snow-covered houses. The composition is minimalist and foreboding, dominated by grayscale textures and a grainy, hand-drawn atmosphere. The typography is restrained, with the band’s name in angular script at the top and the album title in a stylized, rune-inspired font below, both integrated seamlessly into the artwork’s somber tone. This shift in visual direction emphasizes the album’s nocturnal themes through contrast, scale, and abstraction, replacing earlier naturalist motifs with symbolic figuration and dreamlike distance.

This attention to visual design is not a peripheral gesture but an extension of the band’s philosophical ethos. McNerney has frequently positioned Hexvessel as a gesamtkunstwerk—an all-encompassing artistic work in which sound, image, and text are inseparable. In that regard, the ‘Nocturne’ edition becomes a curated object, one intended for contemplation as much as listening. The inclusion of the 36-page artbook—containing lyrics, photography, and illustrative accompaniments—offers audiences a meditative interface through which to engage the album’s nocturnal themes. By emphasizing tactility, symbolic precision, and artisanal production, Hexvessel affirms their resistance to ephemerality, grounding their latest release in both sound and substance.

Lead Single: ‘A Dark & Graceful Wilderness’

On March 19, 2025, Hexvessel released the official music video for ‘A Dark & Graceful Wilderness’, the lead single from their forthcoming album ‘Nocturne’. The video features drone footage by NecrosHorns and additional visuals by frontman McNerney, edited by Ville Hakonen.

In a statement accompanying the release, McNerney described the track as “a macrocosm of our new ‘Nocturne’ album,” highlighting its range from “epic black metal structures that evoke nature’s grand epiphany to the minimal synths as we drone out to the chaos of wild space.” He cited influences including Thorns, Tangerine Dream, Darkthrone, Philip Glass, and Dead Can Dance.

The video serves as a visual and auditory introduction to the themes and musical direction of ‘Nocturne’, encapsulating the album’s exploration of the liminal spaces between light and darkness, nature and solitude. The release of ‘A Dark & Graceful Wilderness’ marks the beginning of the promotional campaign for ‘Nocturne,’ offering audiences an early glimpse into Hexvessel’s latest artistic endeavor.

From ‘When We Are Death’ to ‘Nocturne’

Hexvessel’s trajectory across the past decade has been marked by tonal pivots and stylistic recalibrations, each met with a varied but steadily growing critical interest. Their 2016 release, ‘When We Are Death,’ was the most sonically divergent in their discography up to that point—abandoning overt folk aesthetics for a blend of gothic rock and vintage psychedelia. Publications like Louder described the album as “genre-defiant and startlingly theatrical,” while others noted that the departure risked alienating early fans who had embraced the band’s pagan folk beginnings. Nevertheless, the release expanded their reach, especially among post-punk and alternative rock listeners drawn to the album’s doomy textures and metaphysical lyricism.

In 2019, ‘All Tree’ marked a return to acoustic instrumentation and nature-based themes. The album was widely viewed as a conscious recalibration. The Quietus praised its “quiet reverence for the organic world,” calling it a meditative collection that eschewed confrontation for introspection. Critics highlighted McNerney’s vocal restraint and the sparse, pastoral arrangements as evidence of maturity, while Finnish outlet Soundi emphasized its deep cultural resonance with native traditions. ‘All Tree’ did not attempt to reclaim former ground; rather, it carved a new one—one more intimate and lyrically rooted in seasonal cycles and ancestral memory.

By the time ‘Kindred’ was released in 2020, Hexvessel had achieved a synthesis of their prior experiments. The record blended post-punk percussion with shadowy folk refrains, producing what Metal Hammer described as “ritualistic and reflective, standing at the threshold of the modern and the mythic.” Fans and critics alike noted that ‘Kindred’ demonstrated the band’s refusal to remain within a fixed genre, while reinforcing a thematic consistency that ran through their entire body of work.

Against this backdrop, ‘Nocturne’ is being presented by both the band and Prophecy Productions as a distillation of past elements rather than a departure or return. Promotional materials and McNerney’s own commentary suggest an intent to refine—not revise—the Hexvessel canon, drawing upon the atmospheric range of ‘Kindred,’ the folk minimalism of ‘All Tree,’ and the cinematic ambition hinted at in ‘When We Are Death.’ Early reception from niche press has remarked on the album’s textured layering, its dynamic vocal performance, and its esoteric lyricism—positioning it as a culmination rather than an interruption. Where previous albums asked listeners to follow Hexvessel into new territory, ‘Nocturne’ appears to guide them deeper into the terrain already mapped, but not yet fully understood.

Live as Ritual: Upcoming ‘Nocturne’ Concerts

Hexvessel’s live performances at the 2024 Roadburn Festival showcased their multifaceted approach to music and performance art. On April 18, they delivered a full rendition of their album ‘Polar Veil,’ featuring tracks like ‘The Tundra Is Awake’ and ‘Older Than the Gods.’ The following day, April 19, frontman McNerney presented a commissioned piece titled ‘Music for Gloaming: A Nocturne by the Hexvessel Folk Assembly,’ offering audiences an exclusive experience distinct from the previous day’s set. Live recordings from these performances are included in the deluxe edition of their album ‘Nocturne,’ providing listeners with a glimpse into the band’s dynamic live interpretations.

The upcoming performances in Finland scheduled for September 2025 appear poised to build on this template. Announced under the title “A Nocturne with Hexvessel,” the event comprises two nights of concerts: September 20 at G LiveLab in Helsinki and September 27 at G LiveLab in Tampere. The promotional material—featuring the band cloaked in snow-draped robes against a stark winter landscape—suggests an intentional aesthetic continuity with the ‘Nocturne’ album cycle. Visual motifs such as lunar and solar symbols, white flora, and ancient typographic sigils reinforce the framing of these shows as rites rather than events.

The billing promises “2 nights & 2 sets,” an indication that Hexvessel intends to perform distinct programs across each evening. This bifurcated structure suggests the possibility of thematic segmentation: one set focused on material from ‘Nocturne,’ and the other potentially revisiting earlier works within a ritualized framework. The band’s history of setlist curation lends credence to this reading; past performances have often been arranged not chronologically, but symbolically—reflecting elemental phases, natural cycles, or narrative arcs. Given their increasing alignment with Prophecy Productions and the curatorial autonomy it affords them, these upcoming Finnish dates are positioned not merely as concerts but as immersive rites of passage for attendees.

These performances will also serve as the first public staging of Nocturne material beyond pre-release media. Audience reception to the translation of tracks like ‘A Dark & Graceful Wilderness’ or ‘Unworld’ into live contexts will likely shape broader interpretations of the album. As with Roadburn, Hexvessel’s capacity to transpose their studio compositions into live ceremonial acts may be the clearest articulation of their evolving role—not just as musicians, but as custodians of an art form that resists disconnection between sound, space, and spirit.

Conclusion

With the release of ‘Nocturne,’ Hexvessel reinforces their standing not only as a band but as a multidisciplinary artistic entity deeply invested in ritual, symbolism, and the restoration of spiritual resonance through sound. Anchored by their longstanding themes of nature mysticism and esoteric introspection, the album threads together their previous musical chapters while opening a space for deeper exploration—sonically, philosophically, and visually. The collaboration with Prophecy Productions has provided both the infrastructure and curatorial latitude to present ‘Nocturne’ as an immersive object, with its deluxe editions, accompanying visuals, and bonus live material extending the album beyond the boundaries of conventional distribution.

The forthcoming performances in Helsinki and Tampere this September are poised to translate ‘Nocturne’’s layered compositions into a physical encounter—reaffirming Hexvessel’s belief in music as rite, not just recording. These events will not merely promote an album; they will enact its ethos, embodying the band’s vision of art as a threshold experience between the tangible and the mythic. At a time when music is frequently reduced to transient digital fragments, Hexvessel remains committed to crafting something lasting—a body of work grounded in physical experience, artistic intention, and the enduring pull of what lies beyond the visible.