Copenhagen based Hexis was a band to be noticed at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. They played fast, hard, and like the beast of seven heads emerging from the darkest depths of the ocean, Hexis has ascended upon mankind with his crushing delivery of blackened mix of metal/hardcore/post-metal. Roya cuaght up with them…
Tell me how you started the band?
TOBIAS: Filip and Simon started playing with our old guitarists Kasper (currently playing in the experimental/atmospheric doom band ARAK) and Stig back in January 2010. I joined them in April the same year. Since then we’ve had a couple of bassists, Søren and Bjarke. Søren is now playing bass in my other band NO FEALTY and Bjarke is focusing on a doom project last I heard. We also had a guitarist, Christian. He’s had a grind project for a while and also has black metal-thing. Our current line-up consists of our leadsinger, Filip, Simon on the drums, Kenn on bass and Rasmus and myself on guitar.
How did you get the name Hexis and what does it mean?
TOBIAS: Kasper, who I mentioned above, was studying philosophy at the time and he came up with the name. In ancient Greek philosophy it means something along the lines of the morality of morality – something about the normative structures behind our morals – but I could be wrong, hehe. I know that the French philosopher Bourdieu also uses the concept, but I can’t account for it any deeper. If I gotta be honest, we held on to the name because it’s just a cool word – five letters and an X in the middle.
TOBIAS: That depends on what constitutes an album. The way I count, we’ve put out two full lengths – XI and ABALAM. XI is rather short, about 22 minutes (as far as I remember), so some people think of it as a EP. We’ve also put out a bunch of 7-inches, tapes, CD’s and various formats of splits.
Tell us about your split album?
TOBIAS: We recently released a 10-inch split with PRIMITIVE MAN from Denver. It has one song from each band. Our contribution is a bit more doomy than most of the songs on ABALAM, I’m really satisfied with the result though.
You are currently on tour?
TOBIAS: Yes, we are about a third into the tour right now with PRIMITIVE MAN. It’s 30 days all over the US and Canada. Right now I am sitting in the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis. The last 8 shows of the tour are with REPROACHER and PLEBIAN GRANDSTAND – I’m really looking forward to that too.
Oh, so you played with them in Denmark?
TOBIAS: Yes, HEXIS played with PRIMITIVE MAN in Aarhus – sadly I couldn’t play that show, but Rasmus tells me that it was a blast!
How many times have you attended Roskilde?
TOBIAS: We’ve all been there a bunch of times as regular attendants, I mean, we all grew up in the shadow of that festival, so it’s like a big thing when you’re a teenager in Copenhagen – or even Denmark. This year we were lucky enough to be booked for the festival.
What is it like to play at the festival?
TOBIAS: In one word: AWESOME! You know, the Roskilde Festival is a big fucking machine and our show was just a small piece of the whole thing – most of the crew taking care of our show are volunteers and they did an awesome job – thank you Morten and Sofia.
What tours do you have coming up?
TOBIAS: After this tour we’re going to tour Europe for 3 weeks in September and October and in November we’re going to Japan, playing 9 or 10 shows.
Tell us about your 3-week European tour?
TOBIAS: Actually, I’m not going on that tour, but the band will be going to Portugal, playing shows on the way down there (and back again) in most of the countries they’ll be passing through, including a small detour to England.
What bands are you playing with in Portugal?
TOBIAS: A whole bunch, namely CULT OF LUNA, SWANS and YOB.
In the UK?
TOBIAS: In the UK, the band will be playing five shows. Most of the tour is with the Swedish band RAINMAKER, so they are playing the shows in England with us. Also, there’ll probably be a couple of local acts playing with us each night.
What bands are you playing with in the US?
TOBIAS: The US tour is 30 shows – the first 24 shows are with PRIMITIVE MAN and the last 6 are with PLEBIAN RANDSTAND and REPROACHER. There are almost always local bands on the bill whenever we playing shows on tour – those are at least half the fun of the tour experience!
Tell us about your Japan tour in November?
TOBIAS: Our lead singer, Filip, is booking most of our shows. For this one I think he had some cool dudes over there take care the shows. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to that tour.
Are there any special things you are doing in Japan – and have you been there before?
TOBIAS: When we’re touring it’s not seeing the Eiffel tower or Big Ben I’m looking forward to, it’s listening to great bands and meeting new cool people. 99% of the nights on tour we’re not sleeping in hotels or anything like that – we’re sleeping in the promoters (or other helpful peoples’) house or apartment. All of those impressions are what I cherish when I’m back home in Denmark. It’s that stuff I’m looking forward to in Japan as well. Oh, and no, none of us have ever been to Japan.
Do you bring your merch with you or do print it there?
TOBIAS: I don’t know the exact deal yet, but I think we’ll print most of it over there and bring a little bit with us on the plane.
How would you describe your music?
TOBIAS: Always a tough one. Back in 2010 when we started the band we hadn’t really found our sound yet – we just knew that we wanted something in the vein of the French band CELESTE – I don’t know if we succeeded. A lot of people call us sludgy – although I love sludge, I think I’ll stick with chaotic hardcore mixed with black metal.
Celeste has made their own unique sound, you took it further?
TOBIAS: I don’t know if we took it further – we’re definitely doing something different – I’ll leave that up to the listener. I can’t really define what we are doing different – it’s always hard to put this stuff into words.
What’s your current release like – and how would you describe it?
TOBIAS: When someone talks about a bands current release, I automatically think about the latest full length. We spent about a year writing our latest album, ABALAM, using whatever time we could spare in-between tours to write new songs. We tried to keep kind of a similar feeling in all of the songs, focusing on the whole album rather that just one song at the time. We wanted to leave people thinking “Hey, that’s a great album”, rather than “Hey, that’s a great song”. I hope you get what I’m trying to say. We also spend a lot of time listening to other bands music and checking out what studios and engineers were capable of making bands sound awesome. We decided on THE RANCH PRODUCTION HOUSE in Southampton, England. Lewis Johns, who works there, is an awesome sound engineer – he recorded and mixed our album. We had it mastered in New York at New Alliance East. All in all I’m really satisfied with the final product – everyone involved did an amazing job – including Lewis’ assistant Tony James.
What ideas do you have for your next record (more classical music at the end?)
TOBIAS: It’s hard to say. Right now we haven’t written a single song for it yet – we’ve been spending all of our available time, since the release of ABALAM in January, touring with those songs. I hope that when we start writing, it’ll take on a life of its own and that it’ll feel like a natural extension of the stuff we’ve been doing since we wrote ABALAM. I’m thinking about our split with PRIMITIVE MAN and our upcoming split with THIS GIFT IS A CURSE (who are our good friends). Check those out; maybe it’ll be something along those lines – maybe not, hehe.
Is your sound new to the Danish scene?
TOBIAS: I wouldn’t call us pioneers or anything fancy like that – we’re not the only Danish chaotic hardcore/black metal band out there, but we are trying to cover new ground genre-wise and evolve ourselves as a creative band.
Is there a lot of hardcore and metal there?
TOBIAS: Yes, Denmark has a quite vibrant underground music scene – including hardcore and metal.
How is the scene growing?
TOBIAS: That’s hard to say. I think there are a lot of new bands coming out these days, playing a lot of different genres. It’s like hardcore and metal is becoming wider genres, capable of incorporating stuff that used to be non grata just a few years back. I guess that’s the same for most other places – I like that.
Tell us about bands that have recently been inspired by you?
TOBIAS: I don’t want to put my band in the driver seat like that, but there are definitely bands out there that are inspired by the same flows of creativity as us – and maybe by us – I know that I’m inspired by a lot of them. I could mention the Danish bands EGLISE, WHORLS, THE PSYKE PROJECT, AJUNA and more.
FOR FILIP:
Tell us about your record label – what made you decide to make one?
FILIP: It’s a small one called BLOATED VEINS. I started it a few years back, mainly to release a CD for Hexis, but then I figured that it would be cool to release other bands as well
Tell us about the latest release on your label?
FILIP: My latest release is a triple vinyl for the American sludge band THOU, it’s a collection of a bunch of different records they did in the past.
Do you have a web store?
FILIP: Yes, I have a Bigcartel-account where I sell the records. But I’m selling most of the records when I’m on tour with HEXIS.
Have you brought bands on your label with you on tour?
FILIP: Yes, we did a tour with PSYKE PROJECT earlier this year and then we did a mini-tour with WHORLS last year. I haven’t released WHORLS yet, but that record is coming out very soon.
Does it take a long time and effort to book a tour?
FILIP: When we started to tour, then it took a lot of time, but over time I’ve built up a pretty good network, so it’s way easier now. Don’t get me wrong, it still takes a lot of time, but not as much as it did in the beginning.
FOR HEXIS:
What’s you favourite country to play in?
TOBIAS: Germany.
Why is Germany so good for shows?
TOBIAS: Good people, good parties, good beers, good deals, short distances (most of the time), good labels – all in all, I guess you could just call it a dedicated scene.
Do you have Danish websites that promote hardcore/punk/metal gigs?
TOBIAS: Hmm, no not really – not that I know of at least. It would be nice though. Mostly I just know what venues usually have the good shows. I also know what promoters are doing a good job, so I keep their facebook walls handy. Wish I could be of more help to outsiders of the Danish metal/punk/hardcore scenes.
Does DK help band with funding touring?
TOBIAS: Yes, to some extent. The Danish government is running a lottery company. Some of the profits from that company go into a huge fund – some those funds are distributed to touring bands. It’s a welcome contribution to the tour budget, but it far from covers all of our expenses. For example, renting a car in Denmark is crazy expensive compared a lot of our neighbouring countries.
By Roya Butler, Wharton ‘12
https://www.facebook.com/Hexisband
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