Artist: Witchery
Label: Century Media
Release: 2006
Rating: 4/5
You know how it goes. Your hour has come to pay for all your sins, you feel the rattle of the finger bones of Charon the boatman’s icy, skeletal hand, and when he lays it on your shoulder you freeze from the horror unfolding before your eyes, all so he can escort you across the river Styx toward the immortal kingdom of the dead, where you’re finally freed from the woes of a mortal, one-shot life. Aaaaaaaa and brrrrr,… what wonderfully radical scenes! After five years of silence, Witchery are back with a fine new album! At first I was afraid the title was hiding some unfortunate “a tribute to” compilation of songs dedicated to Blue Oyster Cult, but luckily that wasn’t the case! Five years is less than a day off for Witchery, because the band picks up with the new album exactly where it left off with “Symphony For The Devil” (2001).
Looking for a killer “all – star” project? That’s Witchery! Witchery bring together some excellent heavyweights of the music world – instrumentalists, that is, the one-of-a-kind riff master Patrick Jensen (of The Haunted), bassist Sharlee D’Angelo (of Arch Enemy, Mercyful Fate) and drummer Martin Axenrot (Bloodbath), who recently helped Opeth out on their concert tour. Let’s quickly refresh your memory. Witchery rose in 1997 from the ruins of Satanic Slaughter, and before “Don’t Fear The Reaper” they put out three studio albums and an EP, which means a five-year break is a seriously long pause for such a relatively young band!
“Don’t Fear The Reaper” was already recorded in 2004, but the band just couldn’t land a proper deal, one worthy of the musicians, so only this year did Century Media take them under their safe wing and help them get the new album out. And damn right! Witchery are once again spewing out the blackest thoughts a human brain can produce. Boundless evil, damnation, cosmic deluge, epidemics of the most revolting diseases, famine,… are just some of the most innocent associations the new Witchery legacy conjures up. In short, death will punish us or redeem us one way or another, it’s all a matter of personal perspective. What I’m trying to say is that the music is extremely wicked and black, beyond all the basic foundations of blackness, and for lyrics like these you’d be hard-pressed to find better musicians to bring them to life than Witchery. The opener Disturbing The Beast tells you right away that we’re dealing with the right men in the right place. Witchery immediately serve up an extremely lively sound of massive proportions, where the instruments are pushed to the max against each other, yet strike a perfect production balance, the kind real metal dreams demand. Jensen has once again conjured up that distinctive guitar sound, classic-metal raw, fiery and alive, which gives the riffs he invents their unmistakable identity. D’Angelo’s bass line grinds and rattles freely and downright shamelessly along Mercyful Fate lines, Axenrot shines in mastering every drumming skill there is, especially in the wit and dynamic explosiveness of his fill “rollings” and the juicy use of the double bass drum pedals. The hair on your skin stands straight up, bristling sharply, when the intensity of these guys’ approaches fuses together. Stigmatized shows you right away what Witchery are all about. Fundamentally sworn to the classic principles of the great metal pioneers of the eighties, they add unimagined dimensions of black aggression, for which the main culprit is Toxine’s raspy, bombastic vocal, as if it came from a rotting corpse buried six feet under. In Draw Blood they prove their loyalty to role models Judas Priest, since the track works like a true antipode to the Judas Priest songs The Reaper or Victim Of Changes. Of course it doesn’t sound quite like them, but the individual building blocks of the whole stirringly revive something that happened exactly 30 years ago. But in a modern, brutalized version, naturally. On the atmospheric side Witchery literally destroy. There isn’t a track that deserves anything less than a rating of excellent!
If we go looking for Witchery’s “cliché” side, which in their case is a very thankless and hard-to-justify move as far as objectivity toward the band goes, the compass needle might swing toward a band like Old Man’s Child. In Witchery we once again find elements of black metal built into the basic classic heavy metal riff form. The riffs are classic, masterful, inspired, original and fresh, and they grab you with their zeal in an instant. And these riffs are mostly backed by Axenrot’s double bass pedals, which in places bring Witchery’s expression close to the patterns of German old school heavy metal (I’m thinking of the rawness of Grave Digger), but it often happens that it all turns into extremely wicked onslaughts of blasts in the background, laced with highly atmospheric synths, steering Witchery’s expression toward “black metal”. Vocalist Toxine fits perfectly here too, since he can summon growls that knock on the door of “death metal”. Tracks like Ashes and Cannon Fodder are direct proof of the bold and brilliantly successful merging of these elements. Plague Rider starts off drawing on riff elements of the likes of Grave Digger, vampirized through a toxic dimension of fiery, brutal hissing, of the vocal terror and horror that Toxine’s voice spreads. Crossfixation is the moment of the record where Witchery dive deepest into the waters of brutal “death metal” elements.
This album carries a contagious “groove” that grabs you from the first second and doesn’t let go. Not every band is capable of that. Witchery prove they belong in the quality top tier, and “Don’t Fear The Reaper” only confirms that these are extremely talented and experienced, technically flawless masters of music. Witchery are going nuts like madmen. They crawl deadly and unstoppable, and show absolutely no mercy while doing it. This is destruction without equal. An album of exceptional quality through every single second that sails through your ears. Convincingly furious and evil to the bone! “Don’t Fear The Reaper” is thus one of the most consistent metal albums of 2006. In terms of the level of extremely high climax, which is chillingly real, and the freshness of riff sharpness that will at any moment prove wrong anyone who dares claim everything in metal was invented long ago. The riffs have big balls, the dynamics ride giant waves. The vocals, in production and execution, are really a kind of new instrument in the overall Witchery sound. As if some machine or a rattling robot of a “new era” landed on Earth in a spaceship and wanted to turn it into devastation without equal. An album that is relentlessly evil, true in its preaching, big in atmosphere, big in riffs, big in production. What more could you want!?!? The limited editions also include two covers, namely Immortal Death and Legions Of Hades by Satanic Slaughter. So, as I said. Evil has come alive again, the flies are buzzing, the beast is thirsty for blood, the demons of hell are reaping souls from heaven and beating the angels from the sky with a flaming flail, heaven will burn and darkness will cover the Earth. And nobody has ever managed to escape from here! And neither will you. Heh, heh, heh,… Welcome to the land of eternal damnation, welcome to your very own personal death (if you believe in it, of course)!
Line-up
Toxine – vocals
Richard Corpse – guitar
Jensen – guitar
Sharlee D’Angelo – bass
Martin Axenrot – drums
Production
Tue Madsen
Tracklist
01. Disturbing The Beast (2:41)
02. Stigmatized (4:12)
03. Draw Blood (3:18)
04. The Ritual (4:03)
05. Ashes (4:17)
06. Plague Rider (3:56)
07. Damned In Hell (3:55)
08. Crossfixation (4:09)
09. The Wait Of The Pyramids (3:55)
10. Immortal Death (1:31)
11. Styx (4:54)
12. War Piece (2:22)
13. Cannonfodder (2:37)
Album runtime: 45.58
