Review by Greg on June 13, 2026.

You don't need to dig deep into the album promo to guess what genre these unfriendly Polish guys play. Hexenaltar's debut album "Descending Curse" falls squarely in line with the current school of black/speed/thrash metal, but in a way more primordial form, with a logo harkening back to Sarcófago, and a relentless sonic assault similar to how Hellhammer would sound if they formed today. The ludicrous playing time of 27 minutes completes the picture, but at the very least you can also be sure they won't waste your time with any unnecessary frills. Hexen or Hexenhaus this is not, so to speak. Actually, they lie at polar opposites.

Indeed, I'm almost surprised that such a triumph of buzzing tremolos and blasting tempos didn't come out of Brazil. Maybe it's a bit too tight for that, as Johnny Dagger never skips a beat while keeping the drums firmly in ultra-fast blast beat mode. About that... the constant carpet bombing of snare hits can get quite overwhelming and, in the long run, boring. One of the things I love about bands like, say, Nuclear Tomb is how they manage to sound impossibly brutal while keeping that trick only for selected instances in a couple of songs, meaning that they hit twice as hard when they eventually appear. Here, the blasting is the normal pace "Descending Curse" works on, so it loses that tension release effect soon and basically becomes white noise. It might sound like a critique that misses the mark on an album of this ilk, but I found it oddly distracting. On the upside, Marc Butcher's manic snarl fits like a glove on this pugilistic background.

Naturally, such an album does not lend itself to choosing clear highlights. Nevertheless, some riffs just sound more convincing ('Maledictus Abyss', 'Xecutioner's Spell', 'Sacred Doom Through Inquisition'), 'Apocalyptic Domination' somehow manages to feel an extra inch more bloodthirsty than the others, and 'Destroyer Of Life' is a banger. The earlier Hellhammer mention wasn't unjustified either, as songs like 'Confession Of The Slaughter' aren't shy about their punk influence, and the songwriting is generally similar to what you'd expect from a crossover band – merciless outbursts of rage, with just a few short solos and rarely coming back for the last refrain, ending somewhere between two and three minutes. Closer 'Torture Of Death', from the height of its titanic 4-minute runtime, doesn't really provide a different kind of closure besides a slightly longer solo and an effect-laden outro.

Certainly, I can't fault Hexenaltar for not being as ambitious as Hellripper or Devastator – nor for stretching the limits of what could be called a full-length album – as I don't think it would be a fair point to base a review upon. But for going in one ear and out the other every time I put this on? Well, maybe.

Rating: 6.6 out of 10