The Hex Dispensers

The Hex Dispensers

The most funereal album of 2015 comes crafted by a band walking a tightrope over the chasm connecting the Wipers and the Misfits since 2007. Ten tracks bristle with propulsive energy, grimy guitars, and enough melody and hooks to fuel an AM radio afternoon in 1965. Yet the mood is so drenched in dread it will send a depressive straight to his or her therapist in minutes flat. Much like Roky Erickson post-Rusk State mental hospital, Alex Cuervo's local quartet clearly equate the blue glow of black & white midnight TV creature screenings with whatever sick noise courses through their heads. "There must be a parallel/ Who stayed and lived to tell the tale," intones "Parallel," the first track. "Another me whose mother cried/ Another me who lied." Or, as the anthemic "Personality X-Ray" shouts, "That person is a time bomb/ That person is a nightmare factory." Hex Dispensers have clearly sussed out that the modern world is far more hellish than anything Dario Argento could lens.