heavy-metal-darkness: Grave Hex | Vermian Death | Cavernous Records/Night Terrors Records

Thursday, September 4, 2025

Grave Hex | Vermian Death | Cavernous Records/Night Terrors Records

From the crypts of Helsinki comes Grave Hex, a band that rose from the underground in 2024 with the goal of channeling death metal in its most primitive and diseased form. Founded by members tied to hardcore and sludge backgrounds, the group quickly found their stride, writing and recording their debut material in a flurry of sessions that captured raw immediacy and unfiltered aggression. Within a year of forming, they completed their first album, "Vermian Death", and secured releases through Night Terrors Records (cassette) and Cavernous Records (CD). Now, with bassist Hanna joining the ranks, Grave Hex are preparing to take their rancid sound to the stage in 2025.

"Vermian Death" is an album that thrives in filth. The sound is cavernous, drenched in decay, and driven by guitars that swarm with buzzing distortion. The drums pound with primal force, and the layered vocal approach, shared across the band, gives the music a grotesque, many-headed presence. From the opening "Steeping Master Worm Flesh" to the closing depths of "Halls Beneath The Primal Mere", the album offers no respite — it drags the listener into its diseased atmosphere and refuses to let go until the last echoes collapse.

The production plays a vital role in shaping this suffocating environment. Recorded and mixed by guitarist Matti Vainionpää and mastered by Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios, the album has the kind of cavernous weight and low-end churn that defines this style of death metal, yet it carries just enough rawness to keep the edges jagged and dangerous. The riffs lumber, twist, and convulse with rotten energy, occasionally spiked with punk-infused bursts that add speed and violence.

What gives "Vermian Death" its character is the combination of relentless heaviness and grotesque imagery. Song titles like "Pungent Pulsating Pools Of Blood" and "Den Of Evil" are as repulsive as the sounds that accompany them, and the cover art by Slimeweaver completes the vision — an unholy package dripping with decay.

This is an album that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Clocking in under half an hour, it captures the raw spark of a young band intent on conjuring death metal at its most primal and festering. For fans of filthy, Autopsy-ic underground extremity, "Vermian Death" is a strong statement of intent, planting Grave Hex firmly in the lineage of Finland’s ever-thriving death metal underground.

Score: 8.0