Black Map, courtesy.

Hex marks the spot for Bay Area rock trio Black Map as the band returns with its fourth album. The title track, “Hex (Come Get It),” mixes a melodic post-grunge with alt-rock; it’s a riff-laden anthem with a shout-along chorus. It followed the first taste with hard-driving single “Disintegrate.” The nine-song collection was made with Saosin guitarist Beau Burchell as producer.

“Of what we recorded, it just made the most sense,” singer-bassist Ben Flanagan said of the initial single. “It’s just such a really direct song. We weren’t really dormant for two years; we were working hard.”

The album, the band’s first since 2022’s Melodoria, checks all the boxes for what Black Map does well: upbeat urgency, heavy guitar riffs and outsized post-grunge melodies. While making the album, the band kept fans in the loop with studio performance videos that showed the songs coming together.

Black Map formed in San Francisco in the mid 2010s as the members’ other bands (Flanagan’s The Trophy Fire and guitarist Mark Engles’ Dredg) sat in neutral. They found each other in the same room, eventually.

“Mark and I were living together at the time. We just wanted to do something heavier than any band we’d ever been in, not like Meshuggah- or Gojira-heavy, though they’re incredible—we just wanted to tune down and just rock out,” Flanagan said.

The pair called up drummer and longtime friend Chris Robyn, whose band Far had recently split, and used him to experiment with the results. Flanagan said the three spoke a similar musical language, which made for quick chemistry. This held true both for the band’s original songs and its exciting covers.

Engles and Flanagan had played together in the past, and Flanagan calls Far one of his favorite bands—so he was already familiar with Robyn’s drumming style.

“We’d never played in a band with Chris, but we really respected him,” Flanagan said. “A week later we had written a song called ‘I’m Just a Driver’ and a song called ‘Gold,’ and we knew pretty quickly we were a band.”

The fortunate events continued. The band sent its music to friends in other bands, catching the ear of fellow hard rock trio Chevelle, who invited them on the road, including a Black Map hometown gig at the Fillmore in San Francisco. The Chevelle tour led to a Bush tour, which opened the door for festival dates.

Flanagan has lived around the Bay Area, moving from Alameda, near Oakland, to Santa Rosa in the North Bay in October 2024.

“We wanted a little more serenity and a little more space for the kid to grow up, so we’re stoked and happy to be there,” said the frontman, who has a son.

The band has been showcasing “Disintegrate” at shows. The track came together quickly, as the best songs often do, after Flanagan brought in a riff and the skeleton of the track to the rest of the band.

“I mumbled through it, and then I listened and gauged what it’s about,” Flanagan said. “I still had to work out the lyrics, but two hours later, we had a tune.”

The nose-to-the-grindstone ethos is one the band knows well. Black Map isn’t an arena headliner and the members are older than many of their peers, but they’re still striving to get there.

“I kinda have a chip on my shoulder because we’re still doing this, and we have fans and a good label,” Flanagan said. “We’re a hard-working, blue collar band, and that’s not easy to do, but I’m going to keep doing it as long as I can.”

Follow writer Mike DeWald at mikedewald.bsky.social.