MUSIC VIDEO: Scranton rapper Lucas Hex masks up for nu metal-inspired ‘Scapegoat’
Not every artist can find their sound on their first project. It takes some musicians years and various incarnations to really hit their stride. Lucas Hex is one of those artists.
Fueled by pure musicianship, the Scranton rapper has genre-hopped and dipped his toes into various hip-hop trends over the years. While producing a litany of critically acclaimed music, the stars never seemed to fully align.
His heavy new single released today, “Scapegoat,” connects all of the dots. Hex was raised on hip-hop in South Carolina public housing projects. When he relocated to the Pennsylvania suburbs during his formative teenage years, he gravitated towards heavy music and even sang in various metalcore bands. The influence of these drastically different worlds have always been apparent in his music. With his latest effort, he’s managed to perfectly blend them. His new music is for people who walk slightly out of step with the norm, in all the right ways.
Produced by Kronos, “Scapegoat” fits on a playlist alongside grimy underground hip-hop acts like $uicideBoy$, Twiztid, and Ghostemane just as well as it does with nu metal bands like Slipknot or heavy metalcore bands like Stray from the Path and Attila. This makes sense, as Hex frequently cites his strongest influences as Slipknot and Stone Sour vocalist Corey Taylor and Ghostemane, and he toured with former Volumes vocalist Michael Barr in 2018. He also frequently gives a nod to Wilkes-Barre nu metal powerhouse Lifer as an early influence, and their recent comeback shows that the genre is still popular today.
Available now on all major streaming platforms, the dark song comes with an accompanying music video directed by Timmy Price, who also made Hex’s videos for “$MACKED” and “Omen.” Hex appears in a freaky mask alongside drummer Nikoli Giranda of The Hopewell Furnace as he raps, “You keep talking like my psyche’ll sway / Like there’s something to be done to keep my power at bay / But if you fuckers coulda beat me you’d have done it in spades / I’m tryna keep my inner peace and make you sure of your place / I put you fuckers in the dirt right by your grandmama grave / I’m disrespectful go and piss on all the flowers they laid.”
“Scapegoat” is the first of 10 songs on his upcoming album “Psalms of Heresy and Hubris,” set for release on Jan. 8, 2021.
“Got real quiet and wrote this album over quarantine because the isolation made me rethink a lot of myself and my relationships,” Hex posted on Instagram.
“Giving more to what serves me, this album’s kind of the goodbye letter to those things. That’s all real pretentious and it’s just a bunch of rap nu metal mosh songs.”
Named Hip-Hop Artist of the Year at the 2016 Steamtown Music Awards and nominated once again in 2020, Hex plans to drop additional songs and videos in the lead up to the album, which follows 2018’s “Sermons” EP and his full-length debut, “Blue Carolina.” Most recently, he released a single called “Bloodshot” on April 24, 2020.
Photo by Gia Mazur
