''Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method'' is the fourth full-length studio album by American drone rock band

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Background

Marking a new direction the band would follow in years to come, ''Hex'' stands in stark contrast to Earth's previous works. While retaining the extremely heavy doom/drone metal song structure of epic riffs over simple repetitive drum beats, the guitar was inflected with country influences that favored a cleaner reverb-heavy tone layered with acoustic instruments over the band's previous predilection for distortion. The press release cited diverse influences such as

Ennio Morricone Ennio Morricone ( , ; 10 November 19286 July 2020) was an Italian composer, Orchestration, orchestrator, conductor, trumpeter, and pianist who wrote music in a wide range of styles. With more than 400 film score, scores for cinema and televisi ...

Billy Gibbons William Frederick Gibbons (born December 16, 1949) is an American rock musician, best known as the guitarist, primary vocalist, and only constant member of ZZ Top. He began his career in Moving Sidewalks, who recorded '' Flash'' (1969) and op ...

Neil Young Neil Percival Young (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian and American singer-songwriter. After embarking on a music career in Winnipeg in the 1960s, Young moved to Los Angeles, forming the folk rock group Buffalo Springfield. Since the begi ...

's soundtrack to the movie ''

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'', country musicians

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, and

Roy Buchanan Leroy "Roy" Buchanan (September 23, 1939 – August 14, 1988) was an American guitarist and blues rock musician. A pioneer of the Telecaster sound, Buchanan worked as a sideman and as a solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career and t ...

. Carlson indicated that he viewed this shift as part of a continuum rather than a categorical change in direction: The album was influenced by

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, particularly his novel ''

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''. Every song title on the album is named after a phrase found in the text of the novel. Carlson commented that: Carlson said that "There's an arc to each song and an arc to the album, rather than just a collection of songs. There's silence and a sense of space to the music". The subtitle is from

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

's ''

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''. It was well received by fans of the band and critics alike despite the change in sound. When asked about the elimination of distortion, Carlson remarked:

Reception

Critics acknowledged the sharp transformation in the band's sound and were generally favorable towards ''Hex''. Writing for ''

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'', Austin Gaines described the album as a "surprisingly beautiful instrumental album" that exchanged distorted riffing for "the austere beauty of a telecaster roaming the Western U.S." In ''

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'', Kevin Hainey praised the album as "an elegant and singular effort filled with sparsely beautiful passages that lead headlong into the void". Within the band's stylistic transformation, Todd DePalma observed in '' Chronicles of Chaos'' "a stripped, damn near ossified sound that yields a more conceptual - and by far the heaviest - album of arth'sstoried lifespan".

Track listing

Personnel

* Dylan Carlson – guitar, banjo, baritone guitar *

Adrienne Davies Adrienne Davies is the current drummer and percussionist of the post-rock band Earth. Davies is credited as drummer on several of Earth's albums. They range from '' Living in the Gleam of an Unsheathed Sword'' (2005) and for drums, percussion ...

– drums, percussion, wind chime *John Schuller – bass guitar *Dan Tyack – lap and pedal steel guitar *Steve Moore – trombone, tubular bells *Randall Dunn – production, harmonica, recording

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hex Or Printing in the Infernal Method 2005 albums Earth (American band) albums Southern Lord Records albums Albums produced by Randall Dunn