A deep cut into infinity, and we keep delving deeper into the bowels of the Norwegian music scene.
There are albums that come to us as music.
Good, average, simply music.
Others arrive as places.
SURGICAL CUTS IN THE COSMOS, the seventh album by Hex A.D., is one of those places — dark, heavy, strange and, at certain moments, surprisingly beautiful.
Released on May 22, 2026, through Apollon Records, the album brings together seven tracks spanning just over 45 minutes. And perhaps it could not have been any other way.
From the title itself, there is a feeling that we are facing some kind of intervention. Not a distant observation of the universe, but an attempt to open it up and discover what lies beneath the surface.
Hex A.D. does not seem interested in simply looking at the cosmos.
They seem to want to open it, with a scalpel and without anesthesia. And that is exactly how this album begins to make sense.
Before the cut, meet the surgeon.
For those who still do not know Hex A.D., perhaps we need to go back a few years.
The story begins in 2011, in Larvik, Vestfold, Norway, when drummer and vocalist Rick Hagan and legendary British producer Chris Tsangarides began the project that would initially be known as Hex, later becoming Hex A.D.
Metal Archives records the project’s activity as beginning in 2011 under the name Hex and describes the band as a project conceived by Hagan and Tsangarides.
Hagan did not arrive at the project as an unknown musician. His journey had already taken him through bands such as Absolute Steel and 21st Century Rox, as well as work as a drummer for international names who passed through Norway, including Blaze Bayley, Tim “Ripper” Owens and Paul Di’Anno.
This experience also helps us understand the confidence with which Hex A.D. moves between different territories of heavy rock.
But perhaps the best way to understand the band is to forget, for a few minutes, about labels.
Doom?
Yes.
Progressive metal?
Also.
Classic hard rock, stoner, psychedelia?
Absolutely!
Hex A.D. has always seemed to exist precisely in that territory where these things stop being separate boxes and begin to speak to one another.
It is heavy music, but it is not only about heaviness.
It is progressive music, but it does not need to turn every composition into a demonstration of virtuosity.
It is deeply influenced by the 1970s, but it never seems to be trying to pretend that we are in 1974.
And this identity has been built over more than a decade.
Now, in 2026, the band arrives at a new moment.
A lineup carrying history — and what a history!
The lineup we find on SURGICAL CUTS IN THE COSMOS brings together Rick Hagan on vocals, guitars, drums and bass pedals; Are With Gogstad on bass; Mags Johansen on Hammond, Mellotron, piano and keyboards; Matt Hagan on drums; and Rowan Robertson on guitars. Robertson became an official member in 2025, after previous contributions to the band.
And there is something particularly interesting about this lineup.
Each musician adds a different layer to the sound.
Rick Hagan remains the gravitational center of the band: voice, guitar, songwriting and also drums, establishing many of the foundations upon which the album is built. The album credits him with drums, lead and rhythm guitars, bass pedals and all vocals.
Are Gogstad is responsible for part of that weight that we do not necessarily notice immediately, but that we feel. The bass does not simply follow the guitars; it helps build the ground upon which the entire album moves. And there is a delicious little curiosity here: to deal with the gravity of these songs, Gogstad reconfigured his bass using the four lower strings from a five-string set. The result is precisely that depth that seems to come from somewhere beneath the floor.
Mags Johansen brings another dimension and opens up new layers. Hammond, Mellotron, piano and keyboards do not appear merely to color the songs. There are moments when his instruments seem to come from somewhere much darker than the guitar itself. The influence of horror soundtracks and dissonant textures becomes particularly interesting on this album.
Matt Hagan and Rick, meanwhile, discovered during the previous era of live shows a rather specific passion: playing with two drum kits. And they decided to take that experience into the studio.
The result is exactly the kind of decision that suits Hex A.D.
Why have one drum kit when we can have two?
Because the universe is already too big. We need more noise to fill it.
I confess that this review should have been available long before the album was released, but new nuances also require new habits, and I couldn’t resist letting this gem roll around a few dozen times during my travels before I could definitively speak about it.
This album needed the road, time, the refreshing summer breeze to unleash sensations.
And then the cut begins.
“Reintroducing a Bit of Heat” opens the album with a guitar that seems to know exactly where it wants to go.
There is no long ceremony.
There is no need to build suspense for minutes. The riff comes in and takes up space.
The song has that characteristic doom weight, but it does not remain trapped inside it. There is movement, there is groove, and there is an energy that makes the track move forward instead of simply sinking.
It is an extremely effective opening because it immediately establishes the album’s new posture.
Simpler.
Heavier.
Dirtier.
More physical.
The band itself summarized this change with three particularly appropriate words: “Simpler, harder, dirtier, heavier!”
The release material also emphasizes that the album moves away from grand concepts in favor of sonic impact and a production deliberately less tied to the retro aesthetic. And perhaps it is precisely this freedom that allows the album to breathe.
We arrive at “A Bloody Mess” and, if the first track opens the door, “A Bloody Mess” comes in through the window.
There is something almost punk about the way the song moves.
It is more compact, more nervous and more insolent.
And that is great!
Because there is one quality we sometimes forget when talking about heavy music: fun.
Everything does not need to be monumental.
Not every riff needs to carry a philosophy.
Sometimes a riff simply needs to be good enough to make you want to turn up the volume. “A Bloody Mess” understands that.
The guitars have dirt, the vocals gain an appropriate roughness, and the rhythm section keeps the track in constant motion.
It is Hex A.D. saying:
“Yes, we know how to make progressive music. But today we simply want to destroy something.”
The cuts deepen, and “Black Rope Candy” is where the body of this album begins to change its skin, plunging deeper into the band’s psychedelic and progressive side.
It is a track that does not need to hurry.
It prefers to create an atmosphere.
And here Mags Johansen’s keyboards begin to take on a special importance.
There is something almost cinematic in certain moments, but not in the grand, conventional sense.
It is closer to an old horror film.
A dark room.
A half-open door.
Something you know should not be there.
Hex A.D. has always had this ability to transform classic influences into something of its own, but on this album that characteristic seems particularly evident.
It is not nostalgia.
It is musical memory transformed.
“Perfectly Fatal” is perhaps one of the tracks where the band’s past speaks most clearly with its present.
There is that inevitable shadow of Black Sabbath — especially in the bass and riffs — but Hex A.D. does not remain trapped within Sabbath.
The composition moves.
The guitars breathe.
The melodic elements come and go.
And there is a very important quality here: control.
A band can be heavy simply because it plays everything loud.
Knowing how to build heaviness is something else.
Hex A.D. belongs to the second category, definitely.
Heaviness, in this case, is not just distortion.
It is expectation.
It is space.
It is a note that remains for just long enough for the brain to begin imagining the next one.
And when it arrives, we are already waiting for it.
Then comes “P.I.G.” – here I need to turn up the volume and take a deep breath before diving in.
Almost ten minutes.
And suddenly, the scalpel finds a deeper layer.
This is one of the tracks where Hex A.D. most clearly allows its progressive side to manifest without apologizing for taking up space. The song alternates atmospheres, textures and moments of greater heaviness, functioning almost like a small journey within the album itself.
And it is difficult not to pay attention.
“P.I.G.” does not seem to be trying simply to reach the next chorus.
It wants to build something.
At certain moments, the guitar seems to float.
Then the atmosphere begins to grow more unsettling.
The keyboards enter like shadows.
The weight gradually appears.
And when we finally realize where we are, we have already traveled a considerable distance.
It is probably the moment when the album most clearly demonstrates that reducing its conceptual character does not mean reducing its ambition.
Quite the opposite.
Hex A.D. has simply traded the need to tell one single grand story for the freedom to allow each song to have a life of its own.
But, dear readers, do not get used to the silky layers. “The Devil Makes Work for Idle Hands” arrives like morphine being injected: painful and deliciously delirious.
The title already carries a provocation.
The song delivers another.
“The Devil Makes Work for Idle Hands” may be the moment when the album comes closest to stoner doom in its heaviest form.
The riff seems to have a weight of its own.
The bass deepens everything.
The drums push from behind.
And Rick Hagan’s voice finds that point between melody and roughness that works so well within the band’s sound.
But there is something more interesting happening.
Hex A.D. does not treat melody as the opposite of heaviness.
Here, melody increases the weight.
It is like a faint light inside a dark room.
It does not diminish the darkness.
It makes us realize its size.
“Death of a Thousand Cuts,” and we reach the end.
Or the final cut.
“Death of a Thousand Cuts” closes the album at more than nine minutes and returns to that broader construction we also found in “P.I.G.”
There is space.
There is melody.
There is a kind of contemplation.
But there is not exactly peace.
Because after everything we have heard, it would be strange if the album simply ended smiling.
There are consequences!
The guitars seem to carry some of the marks left by the previous tracks.
The keyboards once again expand the space.
And the song grows without needing to turn its ending into a gratuitous explosion.
It simply comes to an end.
And then comes the silence.
That is when we realize whether an album truly left something behind.
And this one did.
A different Hex A.D.?
Yes.
But not unrecognizable.
That may be the greatest victory of SURGICAL CUTS IN THE COSMOS.
The band has not abandoned what it built over fifteen years.
It has simply removed a few layers.
After more conceptual and experimental works, Hex A.D. seems to have felt the need to return to the most basic pleasure of a heavy rock band:
Riff, volume, groove, melody and attitude.
The result is not a step backward.
It is a kind of purification.
And perhaps that is why the album feels so alive.
The label itself describes SURGICAL CUTS IN THE COSMOS as rawer, dirtier and heavier, with a production less committed to the retro aesthetic and a combination of low-tuned guitars, deep bass, dark atmospheric keyboards and two drum kits.
But there is a difference between reading this and listening to it.
Because on paper they are merely characteristics.
In music, they become sensation.
Rowan Robertson and the guitar that arrived from another universe.
It is impossible to talk about this album without talking about Rowan Robertson.
The British guitarist brings with him a history that could easily make his presence seem like some kind of special attraction: he was Dio’s guitarist and had already collaborated with Hex A.D. before becoming an official member in 2025.
But the most important thing is not the résumé.
It is what his fingers do within these songs.
Robertson adds a guitar language deeply connected to classic rock, with melodies and solos that find their place within the heavy riffs without seeming out of place.
He does not arrive to turn Hex A.D. into another band.
He arrives to expand what the band already was.
And that difference is enormous.
Because a guest can attract attention.
A member can change an architecture.
Here, the architecture seems to have found new windows.
The weight of five musicians who know exactly where they are
Perhaps this is the point at which SURGICAL CUTS IN THE COSMOS truly sets itself apart.
The band does not seem to be searching for a new identity.
It has already found one.
Now it is experimenting with just how far it can expand it.
The result is an album that can be heard as doom, progressive metal, stoner, classic heavy rock or simply as Hex A.D.
And that last definition may be the most important.
Because influences exist in all music.
What matters is what an artist does after absorbing them.
Black Sabbath is here.
Rainbow is here.
Uriah Heep is here.
Pink Floyd appears in the atmospheres.
Prog is hidden within the structures.
Stoner appears in the grooves.
But the final result does not belong to any of these bands.
It belongs to Hex A.D.
The final cut.
Perhaps that is why I keep coming back to the title.
SURGICAL CUTS IN THE COSMOS.
There is something almost cruel about that image.
Because surgery implies precision, but the album is not delicate.
It is precise, not delicate.
Hex A.D. knows where to place the riff.
It knows when to let the Hammond enter.
It knows when the drums need to push.
It knows when a guitar simply needs to disappear for a few seconds so that something else can breathe.
And, above all, it knows when to stop trying to impress.
That is maturity.
Not the silent maturity of someone who has lost the desire to make noise.
The maturity of someone who has already made enough noise to know which noise truly matters.
SURGICAL CUTS IN THE COSMOS is not the album of a band trying to prove that it still has something to say.
It is the album of a band that seems to have discovered that it still has a lot to say — and that it no longer needs to explain so much.
Just play.
Just let the riff come in.
Just open the first incision.
And then let the blood run.
Verdict?
9.8/10
SURGICAL CUTS IN THE COSMOS is one of Hex A.D.‘s most convincing works precisely because it does not try to be the biggest, the most complex or the most conceptual.
It wants to be heavy.
It wants to be strange.
It wants to be melodic.
It wants to be dirty.
It wants to be progressive when it feels like it.
And, above all, it wants to sound alive.
It succeeds.
It is an album that respects its roots without becoming a museum piece; that knows doom without becoming trapped in slowness; that knows progressive rock without turning virtuosity into an end in itself; that knows classic rock without wearing nostalgia as a costume.
And perhaps that is the true surgery.
Not opening the cosmos to discover some answer.
But opening music itself to remember why it still pulses.
Hex A.D. began its journey in Larvik in 2011.
Fifteen years later, it continues doing exactly what a great heavy rock band should do:
look into the abyss, turn up the volume and ask what happens if we cut a little deeper.
This time, they brought no anesthesia.
And, honestly?
Thank goodness!
7 tracks – 45:38 of pure essence.
Lineup
Rick Hagan — drums, lead and rhythm guitars, bass pedals and vocals
Are With Gogstad — bass
Mags Johansen — Hammond, Mellotron, piano and keyboards
Matt Hagan — drums
Rowan Robertson — lead, rhythm and acoustic guitars
Tracklist
1 – Reintroducing a Bit of Heat
2 – A Bloody Mess
3 – Black Rope Candy
4 – Perfectly Fatal
5 – P.I.G.
6 – The Devil Makes Work for Idle Hands
7 – Death of a Thousand Cuts