Interview with progressive thrash death metal band from United States - HAXPROCESS.
Answered Lothar Mallea (guitars, vocals), thank you!
Recenze/review - HAXPROCESS - Beyond What Eyes Can See (2025):
Ave HAXPROCESS! Greetings to the Florida underground. Before we take a look at your album, I have to thank you. I heard your new album, Beyond What Eyes Can See, for the first time on Friday when I was coming home from work totally pissed off. You know how it is, everything was getting on my nerves. The people around me seemed dull and stupid. I felt like setting up my speakers in front of them and blasting your music. You've made a killer album! How and where did you want to move forward from your previous album, "The Caverns of Duat"? The new album seems rawer, wilder to me.
Our debut was essentially a „proof of concept“ album. Haxprocess used to sound very different, which I will get into a little later, but after having the desire to change the sound of the band, I wrote a group of songs to demonstrate the new direction, and thus „The Caverns of Duat“ was born. Naturally, the next step was to create a follow-up album, and I wanted „Beyond What Eyes Can See“ to not only be heavier and more aggressive, but also performed and produced better, and I think we accomplished all of these goals with the album.
Before I forget, could you please introduce your band? Die-hard fans of progressive death metal and thrash probably know you, but for everyone else, please walk us through the history of HAXPROCESS. How did you get together in 2020 and why this particular style of music? Please reminisce for us.
Haxprocess began once myself (Lothar) and drummer Adam began jamming in my garage. In those days, the band was very different from what it is today. We sounded like an Opeth tribute band, with heavy influence from 80’s metal, such as Mercyful Fate and Megadeth. We went through some lineup changes which are typical of bands early on, before we soldified our current lineup of Adam on drums, Davis on Bass, Shane on lead guitar, and myself on guitar and vocals. This was also the period of time in which I slowly but surely began changing the sound of the band, by committing to extreme metal, making the songs more ambitous, things like that.
Let's move on to the new release. Probably everyone who discovers new music, myself included, pays a lot of attention to the cover. They say that the cover sells. Who is the author of this year's successful motif? How did you get together? And how does the cover theme relate to the music?
The artwork for „Beyond What Eyes Can See“ was done by Juanjo Castellano. We originally contracted someone else for the artwork, but his results were unuasable, so fortunately, Juanjo was able to step in last minute and provide us with that excellent piece, and I think it complements the songs well, particularly the first track.
As I mentioned, the songs literally crush my bones. The sound contributes a lot to that. It's dirty, raw, reminiscent of a bulldozer working in a cemetery. Tell us where you recorded, who is responsible for the mastering and mixing?
We record all Haxprocess songs in my home studio. I handle all of the „engineering;“ microphone placement and stuff like that. We then send the tracks over to Pete DeBoer for mixing and mastering. So far, Pete has mixed and mastered all of our albums, including our third full length, which is already completed, and Pete really is like the 5th member of the band.
What are the lyrics on "Beyond What Eyes Can See" about? Is it classic death thrash metal - graves, bones, skulls, cemeteries? Or are you trying to convey a message? Who is the author?
The songs are all about death and dying, which is the kind of thing I think death metal is supposed to be about. However, they explore suffering through multiple different routes of administration. „Where Even Stars Die“ deals with being torn apart in space, a level of suffering none of us are likely to every experience, while „The Confines of the Flesh“ explores the pain caused by christianity’s influence on the world. „Thy Inner Demon Seed“ is sort of the inverse of the previous track in terms of it’s lyrical content: it explores how a demon takes control of an individual and destroys their flesh in order to „free the spirit.“ The final track has a strong black metal influence, so I wrote lyrics more appropriate to that style, with themes of misery and introspection.
My favorite question, and I think the readers' too. How does HAXPROCESS create new songs? Please give us a glimpse into your kitchen. Who is the author of the basic motifs? Does everything originate in the rehearsal room? I'm interested in the process of composing new songs.
I write all of the music by myself. I spend a lot of time listening to music, and when a section or a melody catches my attention, this is often the initial spark for inspirtation to start writing a new song. Coming up with the first riff or sequence is always the hardest part. Once that has been accomplished, the rest of the song usually writes itself. Then I will record guitar tracks, send it out to the other members, and we begin rehearsing every weekend until we become confident with performing the song.
One thing is bothering me a little. You're from Florida, and I follow your scene quite closely. Most underground death metal bands from your area play very dark, cold music, but at the same time, their music has a certain wildness, animalistic quality to it. For me, that's the hallmark of your bands (at least that's how I see it). But you are "different," you have your own identity! Raw, uncompromising, yet technical, unrestrained. Do you feel music differently? Did you have different role models?
I certainly think Haxprocess is „different.“ I love a lot of Florida death metal, especially Morbid Angel, Atheist, Cynic, Nocturnus, and this very underrated band called Burning Inside, and while Haxprocess is clearly a death metal band, I always want our music to be very exploratory and ambitous, and I think we do this succesfully.
Everyone started out somehow, learned, discovered. HAXPROCESS is a band of very talented musicians. But what were your beginnings like? What was the first impulse that made you pick up an instrument, what bands did you listen to as a young man?
I started playing music on the saxophone when I was in the 6th grade. Shortly after this, I began taking lessons under a well-respected jazz musician by the name of Cornelius Johnson, and his teachings were crucial for my understanding of music. Around this time, I went to a friend’s house, and he happened to have an accoustic guitar. I was very much into stuff like Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, so without knowing how to actually play the guitar, I tried to play Stairway to Heaven and Voodoo Child. Since then, I have played guitar almost every single day. Led Zeppelin I was a cricial album for me as a beginner guitarist, as well as Lightning to the Nations by Diamond Head and Rust in Peace by Megadeth, once I got a little more skilled on the instrument.
You released the album on the excellent Transcending Obscurity Records. Great choice! The new release came out on cassette, CD, and digitally. The album will even be released on vinyl. What is your relationship to music media? Are you a collector? Do you support bands?
I like CD’s a lot. Never been much of a fan of other physical formats, but I try my best to collect CD’s of bands and albums that I like. Although digital gets a lot of negativity, espeically as time goes on, it’s unquestionable that the internet is the best tool for discovering new music. So while I always encourage people to support the bands they like by buying their albums and merchandise, I do have to give a lot of credit to the internet for allowing me to have the music taste that I currently have.
I'm always interested in the underground scene in the country where a band comes from. How is Florida doing in terms of death thrash metal? Do people go to concerts a lot? Do they buy media and merchandise? How does a concert that you consider very successful go?
Honestly the metal scene in Florida is barely alive anymore. In the five or six years I’ve been acitve in the metal scene here, I’ve watched almost every band here either breakup, dissolve, or simply stay dormant for long periods of time, making apperances occasioanlly before vanishing again. It;s pretty depressing honestly, but I’m determined to make Haxprocess continue for as long as I am physically able to.
What about concerts in general? How important are they to you? Do you prefer large festivals or small clubs? What about a tour? Obscene Extreme or Brutal Assault would be ideal festivals for you!
I‘ve come to realize I’m not very fond of tours and constant gigging. I’m much more interested in playing festivals, and I would love to get to a point where Haxprocess can appear on Obscene Extreme or Brutal Assualt, with the occasional local show and club date here and there
Finally, allow me to ask a slightly philosophical question. What does music mean to you? How would you define death thrash metal? Is it relaxation, recreation, or a lifestyle for you?
Music is by far my greatest passion in life, and quite frankly it’s one of the few things I care about. I see a lot of people that claim to be „interested in“ or „dedicated to“ a wide variety of different things, arts, crafts, medias, etc. I am always very skeptical of this, because I think it means they aren’t truly and perosnally invested in any of them. Myself, I adore music, I have a good appreciation for certian genres of film as well, and that’s about it. I have zero interest in sports, or video games, or dancing, etc. Music fulfills me, and I don’t really need much else in life to satisfy me.
Please tell us what HAXPROCESS has planned for the coming months. Give us a little preview. If you have anything you'd like to say to your fans, labels, or promoters, now is your chance...
I imagine by the time this interview is published we will have performed „Beyond What Eyes Can See“ in it’s entirety live, and hopefully the footage of this show will be available on YouTube for your readers to check out. As mentioned earlier, our Third album is completely ready to go, we just need to get artwork made for it and then we can begin the process of scheduling a release date. So stay tuned for developments with that as they unfold, and thank you to everyone reading this and to everyone who has listened to or supported us in some way!
Thank you very much for the interview. When I get annoyed at work again or when I watch the news and need to clear my head, I know what I'll be listening to—of course, "Beyond What Eyes Can See"! It's a great album, thank you very much for that! All the best!
Thank You!
Recenze/review - HAXPROCESS - Beyond What Eyes Can See (2025):
Recenze/review - HAXPROCESS - The Caverns of Duat (2023):
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