We are going back to Hexorcist’s debut, ‘Evil Reaping Death’, an album that already has a few years behind it but still manages to hit with considerable force. And perhaps that is precisely the most interesting thing about returning to these songs: the violence, rawness, and chaos they carried back then still feel very much alive.
The album reminds me a lot of that creative confusion of the late ’80s, when Death Metal had not yet fully defined its boundaries and bands were still moving freely between Thrash, extreme Heavy Metal, proto-Death, and increasingly aggressive forms of expression.
There is something clearly close to Morbid Angel, especially in that sense of controlled chaos, in certain guitar constructions, and in those solos that seem to emerge from a completely unstable dimension. There is also a primitive spirit that can bring Venom to mind, although more as an attitude than as a direct copy.
But where the album really begins to develop a particularly attractive identity is in that connection with Latin American chaos.
That is where Sarcófago inevitably enters the picture.
That dirty, volcanic, poisonous, and blasphemous sound seems to run through part of the album like an underground current. It is a very effective amalgam of Latin American violence and a kind of prehistoric heavy metal, as if different primitive forms of Extreme Metal had melted together inside the same mass of distortion.
And the combination works.
The riffs hit with violence, the drums maintain an almost constant attack, and the solos appear like small explosions of uncontrolled madness. Yet the album is not only about destruction. There are some genuinely interesting instrumental moments, even beautiful ones within all that decay, where the band shows that beneath the chaos there is a very clear compositional intention.
That gives the album depth. We are not simply dealing with thirty or forty minutes of continuous noise. There is dynamics. There is breathing room.
There are moments where the intensity drops just enough to allow other textures to emerge before the music dives back into violence again.
The production also helps. It keeps enough dirt to preserve the old-school spirit, while still allowing you to hear how the instruments interact with each other. Nothing feels excessively modern or artificially polished.
And that is another one of its strengths.
‘Evil Reaping Death’ is a very enjoyable album to listen to precisely because its influences are recognizable without turning the band into an obvious copy. Hexorcist understand that old language and use it to create something that still has energy of its own.
That is why I consider Hexorcist a band worth paying attention to. Not necessarily because they are trying to reinvent Death Metal, but because they know how to work with very primitive elements and make them sound dangerous again.
Now all that remains is to hear what they can deliver with their new material in 2026 and to see how far they have taken this formula after all these years.
In the meantime, if you want to step back into a time when Death Metal still smelled of sulfur, blood, overloaded amplifiers, and smoke-filled rehearsal rooms, then ‘Evil Reaping Death’ remains an excellent gateway.
Welcome back to chaos.
