Album Review: Hexagraf – Walsen van hoop

Band: Hexagraf
Title: Walsen van hoop
Labels: Void Wanderer Productions / War Productions
Release date:  December  18th,  2025
Country: Netherlands
Format reviewed: High-Quality Digital Recording 

Album Review: Hexagraf – Walsen van hoop via Void Wanderer Productions & War Productions by Sílvia

Hexagraf, another band involving the prolific musician Floris Velthuis, has released their debut album and I can say, it grows in me with every listen. Velthuis plays all the instruments in “Walsen van hoop” (“Waltzes of Hope”). The other person in Hexagraf  is Daan Bleumink, responsible for the monstrous vocals. Moving around in the blackened/doom fields, they deliver a big amount of eerie feeling with every song, like something sinister is crawling to you, until you are trapped and dragged towards some dark depths. 

The music in the debut album by this Dutch duo has a thick atmosphere, and at times the air around becomes unbreathable; synths and piano sound ominous, evoking a strange presence, or simply embracing you and infiltrating an icy chill into your spine. Meanwhile, tempos can be slow in a blackened doom way, and all of a sudden here comes the drums delivering some speed, to slow down again after a rapid foray.

Guitars play hypnotic riffs that entwine with the keys and enhance that sinister effect, specially in the slow parts of the songs. There are some cinematic passages, like the intro of the closing track “Bijtend in de geest van productie”, where synths and piano create an oppressive atmosphere that makes you revisit your sanity. This whole song is a whirlwind of agony and unsettling landscapes. Dense, macabre, dark… with a grand finale.

Vocals are mostly hellish gurgles, roars that emerge from the depths of a rotten throat, and fit the music so well. There’s something really wicked in the vocals in “Koud geslagen” (“Cold-blooded”), they sound extremely sinister and gruesome, it gives me goosebumps. 
This is an album that deserves to be listened and enjoyed for what it is: a dark journey enhanced by a chilling aura. 8,5/10

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8.5/10 To Greatness and Glory!
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