Hampshire trio Witchsorrow trio celebrate their 20-year milestone with a magnificent maelstrom of doom metal
Doom is a mood. It’s Old Nick and old horror movies, riffs and folklore, beer and bongs, Sabbath and… more Sabbath. It is, for the initiated, a lifetime’s passion.
That’s certainly the case for Witchsorrow, whose unquenchable quest for making dark, slow and dastardly music has lasted almost 20 years. So how do you celebrate two decades as emissaries for evil? With an album like The Devil And All His Works, that’s how.
And the perfect way to kick off said album is in the doomiest way possible, with Omnia Finiuntur and 11-and-a-half-minutes of tolling church bells, ominous organ, twisted guitars and band leader Necroskull’s tortured drone communing, from the sounds of it, from some other dimension.
Despite beginning in such austere fashion, elsewhere there’s evidence this trio, completed by bassist Emily Witch, with drums on the album the swansong for longtime skinsman Wilbrahammer, have loosened their foundations, and even their hips, in places. That’s not to suggest they’ve segued into Earth, Wind & Fire or anything, but there’s an obvious relishing of the album’s more decadent moments.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a song named after the Roman god of wine and fertility, Bacchus is one such example – its grind unashamedly augmented by some superb ‘70s guitar work. Hades Chains similarly benefits from some Necroskull noodling, with some Eddie Van Halen-isms thrown in early amidst the speedy chugging and a cameo from Svalbard’s Serena Cherry.
Meanwhile, In Triumph We Rot!!! is an absolute fucking hoot and arguably, whisper it, the catchiest song they’ve ever penned, and certainly the catchiest song ever penned to feature the lyrics ‘On the darkest road to glory / The dreadful mass’.
Thankfully, Lamentation and A Quintessence Of Dust, the latter featuring the bloodcurdlingly badass cry of ‘BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!’, are there to remind us that Witchsorrow aren’t going soft anytime soon. They have, however, made their best album to date, which, 20 years into a career, must be the devil’s work!
Rating: 4/5
For fans of: Electric Wizard, Cathedral, Saint Vitus
The Devil And All His Works is released July 3 via Church Road Records.
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