GHOSTEMANE - 'Hexada' (Album Review)

GHOSTEMANE has been steadily on the rise for a while now. I've enjoyed his projects and features for quite some time. When he shows up he has a signature style that I instantly like and continue to like. His flow is fantastic. While I see Bones as the starting point for a lot of artists like Lil Peep and GHOSTEMANE it seems like a lot of these artists are surpassing Bones and kind of creating their own unique lane while changing what rap can be in a really interesting way.

With Hexada he brings all the elements together to create an interesting, diverse, and moody album. GHOSTEMANE's imagery has always leaned towards a sort of gritty, dark sound through his videos to the black metal styling of the way his name is usually written on artwork. You can hear it kind of bleed out heavily through Hexada. The album feels very cohesive; it's genre bending at times. His rapid fire flow sounds unique and is really well done. The title track on this is great and a good introduction to GHOSTEMANE if you've never heard of him. While "Rake" mixes rap, punk, and metal in such a cool way. It's one of the neater songs on the album and he feels right at home in the styles he's tackling on the song. At about the one minute mark the song slides into almost a Slipknot sounding switch and GHOSTEMANE pulls it off perfectly. While songs like "Idle Hands" start merging elements of his sound with something that reminds me heavily of Nine Inch Nails or Skinny Puppy. It's another really solid standout song from the album.

What GHOSTEMANE does with Hexada is pretty remarkable. He slides between styles so easily on the album and keeps it more cohesive than some artists who try to blend these styles. I've heard more than a share of projects this year attempting what GHOSTEMANE's doing on this release, but he pulls it off with such ease and such a tightly constructed project that this not only is a success, but I think it comes out being his best work to date.