Rain hisses through the speakers before the first riff lands. A radio crackles somewhere in the background. Then Alkhemia kick the door open with tremolo guitars and a sudden rush of blast beats, sharp and impatient, the kind that feels less like a groove and more like a weather system.
The opening track Zeitgeist wastes very little time once the intro clears. Guitars from Maxime “LePrince” Beiler and Thomas Fontaine come in stacked, thin and cutting, each line climbing over the other in tight tremolo runs. The melody stays just visible beneath the noise, not sentimental, just cold. Alex Josien’s drumming keeps the floor moving under it, blast beats snapping into mid-tempo passages that give the riffs room to breathe. James Spar’s voice arrives in a familiar black metal register, high and serrated, but he pushes the phrasing harder than expected, stretching syllables across the rhythm rather than just riding on top of it.
Speed is only one tool here. The record keeps pulling back from full acceleration, even inside the faster passages opening space for melody — brief shapes that hover before the next surge of percussion wipes them away. The production leans raw but not murky. Bass from ASA sits low but audible, thickening the middle of the sound rather than disappearing into the guitars.
Excressence pushes things harder. Josien locks into relentless blasts while the guitars carve out a narrow melodic figure that repeats like a warning siren. Then a sudden slowdown. Half-time drums, heavier chords, the bass pushing forward in the mix. The momentum breaks, then snaps back, the band moving between speeds with a confidence that comes from having actually worked out where the brakes are.
The middle stretch is where Häxen finds its most unsettling colours. Prekonition opens with a guitar figure that hangs in the air longer than expected, the notes spaced just far enough apart to feel uneasy. When the drums finally enter they do not explode immediately — a slow, deliberate rhythm first, then the tempo lifts, blast beats creeping in beneath the riff until the whole track starts to feel like it is sliding downhill. The melody keeps returning, slightly altered each time, the guitars layering over themselves, the repetition doing something to the ear that a single statement never could.
Stars and Frozen Faces leans even further into atmosphere. The guitars stretch out, less frantic picking and more sustained chords, the distortion spreading wide across the mix. Josien shifts between driving rhythms and quieter passages where the cymbals carry most of the motion, and Spar uses the space differently — the scream pulls back, closer to a harsh chant in places, the words spilling out with a rough narrative tone before snapping back into full shriek.
Not everything stays inside those colder melodic lines. Hissing Ratz dirties the sound immediately. The riff feels rougher, closer to punk energy than icy precision, the guitars scraping rather than gliding. Josien leans into a faster, almost chaotic drum pattern while the bass pushes harder underneath. The track is short enough that it burns off before you can settle into it.
Then Nonsense. The title fits the mood. The rhythm staggers slightly, the guitars breaking their usual tremolo flow into sharper fragments. Riffs start, twist, collapse. The band sounds like it is testing how far it can bend its own language before the tension snaps, and for a few minutes it is genuinely unclear which way the track is going to fall. Eventually the melody returns, familiar shapes sliding back into place — though not quite in the positions you left them.
By the time Remnants arrives, the energy has changed again. The tempo drops, not dramatically but enough to shift the weight of the guitars. The riffs stretch wider across the mix, the distortion carrying a faint melancholy rather than pure hostility. Spar lowers his voice slightly, the phrasing more controlled, while the guitars circle around the same melodic idea until the sound begins to dissolve at the edges.
The band clearly enjoys the ritual side of this music. Spoken fragments appear briefly earlier in the record. A trace of keyboards. Even a short passage of chanted voices buried deep in the arrangement. None of it dominates. It just adds texture around the guitars and drums, hints of something ceremonial without turning the album into theatre.
Alkhemia have been building this approach quietly for a few years now, and Häxen is the record where it stops feeling like a direction they are moving toward. The guitars rarely stop moving, but they move with intention — riffs spiralling upward, collapsing into slower passages, rebuilding with slightly altered shapes. Josien’s drumming stays precise even during the faster sections, giving the songs a structural coherence that a lot of black metal records sacrifice without ever noticing the loss.
Not every idea lands. A few passages lean on familiar genre patterns, tremolo riffs cycling longer than they need to. But there is a version of that criticism that misses the point — the record’s most memorable moments come from exactly that kind of patience, the willingness to stay inside a riff long enough to see what it accumulates.
Häxen will be released on March 13, 2026 via Non Serviam Records.
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