Rising Stars: Meet Death Hex of Toledo, OH

Today we’d like to introduce you to Death Hex

Death, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We formed as a band in late 2019. Experienced a brief hiatus due to the pandemic and came back strong in late 2021/early 2022.

Since then, we’ve shared the stage with international touring acts such as Signs Of The Swarm, King 810, Convictions, Earth Groans, The Convalescence and many others. We’ve also played several festival appearances with other rising acts in the heavy music space which awarded us honorable mention in major press publications for heavy music.

We released our debut self titled album on September 28th, 2024 which was completely crowd funded and released fully independently. Produced by our city’s own JC Griffin at Lakebottom Recording House and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege in Portland, OR.

We have plans for more new music in 2025 as well as plans to tour and hopefully play more festival appearances around the Midwest and east coast.

The subject matter of our songs reflect our personal experiences in our lives and touch on matters such as but not limited to: mental illness, suicide, stances on being against religious extremism, addiction issues and suriviving trauma.

Our diy work ethic and emphasis on live performance has fortunately netted us a dedicated and growing fan base across our region and parts of the country. Creating and maintaining a cathartic space and a healing community centered around music. This is something we take pride in, being able to provide a space similar to the one we all gravitated towards growing up as people and musicians, whilst also paying respect to our roots and our shared love of heavy music and the culture of hardcore punk.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We started out strong in late 2019 and everything grew very quickly from the first show. The pandemic hitting the world a few months later definitely posed some challenges and a full hiatus for almost all of 2020.

Beyond that, we formed this band when we were all 20, 21 and 24 or so. So life changes have definitely provided some positive challenges. We’ve grown as people, entered day job careers such as the social work profession, electrical and computer engineering, professional culinary/cheffing and construction. Our drummer also was fortunate enough to have had his daughter in 2023 and started a small family. Our bass player also got married this year. Subsequently, these family dynamics shifting in a way added to ours. As this band is more then a band. We see oursleves and our close collaborators all as close family. Everyone we work with is part of the process and the “recipe”.

We’ve also all gotten healthier and more complete as people which is always host with a modicum of changes and challenges which all ultimately influence how we operate and what music we make.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We’re a progressive metalcore/experimental hardcore band from Toledo, OH. FFO: Knocked Loose, Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and The Red Chord.

We love making music and recording is always an invaluable process. More than anything though we’ve always centered heavily around live performance. This is where our hearts at and the best way to experience our music. Our live shows are known to be intense, energetic, entertaining and cathartic. One moment can be comical before bursting into a furious and almost spastic passage. Another moment can be emotive, honest and vulnerable. We’re all pretty dynamic and diverse people and it shows in how we play. All of our music is pretty groove oriented and heavy and compositionally complex in nature.

One section will have elements of mathcore and hardcore and sludge metal, only to be followed with a smooth jazz or blues break and then end with a breakdown reminiscent of MySpace era deathcore.

We like to keep things interesting and make the kind of music we want to hear in the world. We understand not everyone will get it. But we love those who do more than words can describe.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
That’s definitely a hard one to say. Given the nature of our name also, (Death Hex) I’m not sure luck is really implied to be at play!

Overall, I’d say we’re tremendously lucky to be here, to still be doing our thing and lucky to have so much support and so many amazing opportunities.

We believe in what we do so much and so do a lot of other people it seems like.

So that being said, I’d say we’re very lucky but we also work exceedingly hard at everything we do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nGnA8oVDV5GjSrHw-uGkYX3s8xLEax7_/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deathhextoledo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deathhextoledo
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/0XM81qn79WQ?si=Gc5BsFOryBOZJU0T
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/album/0Quz7AcLnNbU3FNk9z9qOi?si=F9FT9rv2T6O11P8GeUoC5Q