Ever-productive Black metallers DECAYED's umpteenth release finds guitarist JA, the Portuguese band's sole remaining original member, having distilled all these 17+ years of experience and resilience into an undeniably profound know-how to craft a gripping head-banger.
Hexagram's in-between-the-tracks pauses are reduced to virtually non-existent, and, in result, the album strikingly resembles a conceptual cycle of songs designed to follow its occultist protagonists' nightime routine of mystic rituals. The demoniac gatherings and the unholy invocations that expectedly go with it are contemplated in text-book, old-school Black Metal style and draped with the usual mix of guttural croaks, endless amounts of foggy six-string twang and drumming at times so fast, mechanically groovy and cold-bloodedly precise that it could easily be mistaken for a drum-machine.
Sounding noticeably bigger, cleaner and crisper than your average blast-beaters, DECAYED easily compensate for the production's ill-conceived over-polishing by retaining a fun-loving, unadulterated coarseness, a party-time feel that is possibly inspired by VENOM's rowdy Black 'n' Roll and, in terms of distinctiveness (and entertainment value), ultimately earns them a decisive step above the multitude of their peers infinitely striving for the elusive Holy Grail that has become of emulating Norwegians' genuine gloom.