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VIPËRWITCH
Witch Hunt: Road To Vengeance

Stormspell (2024)
Rating: 7/10

There’s some serious nostalgia going on with Denver, Colorado-based demons Vipërwitch. Like extras from a Mad Max movie, Vipërwitch rocks the neon album cover and worships movies like Red Sonja because their quest is to bring back, or at least attempt to visit, an era they were likely never part of.

I first heard about this clan in 2020 when they issued a single entitled ‘She Wolves Of The Wasteland’, although they had originally formed in 2014. Their lack of activity seemed to add a certain mystique, but whether that was unintentional or not, the band returned from the mist earlier this year with a trio of singles.

Witch Hunt: Road To Vengeance is an intriguing debut full-length album spattered with instrumentals, which I assume are to add to the retro atmosphere initially created by the cover art. From here on in its standard but enjoyable throwback metal led by the vocals of Danica “Lynx The Huntress” Minor, who also wields the axe. The warriors around her are Jason “Zeus” Pinero (bass), Jacob “Thunderor” Coellen (drums) and, wait for it, William “Sleeze Machine” Perkins (guitar).

The album is relatively short at 39 minutes but it does jam in quite a few infectious rockers that have a certain sizzling aura, particularly the stomping ‘The Viperwitch’ and iron clad ‘Bathory’. There’s no denying the charm, although one can’t quite overlook the dreadful production which results in the instruments sounding as if they were recorded in a garden shed. A majority of tracks don’t seem to have made it out of the darkness of the demo stages, but even so their rough nature may appeal to the metal purists who like their music weighed down by rust.

Vipërwitch are obviously going for some post apocalyptic sci-fi feel with throbbing interludes like ‘Vapor City: Blood And Steel Upon The Silver Tower’ and the fog-enshrouded ‘The Proving Grounds: Tooth And Nail’, which could easily be the soundtrack to some 80s movie trailer. To an extent there is an element of trashiness to Vipërwitch in the same way Slave Raider and Rogue Male (remember those bands?) roamed the streets and relied on appearance over musical quality.

The other main problem here is that there are too many instrumentals (five in total) and enough cheesy lyrics to cover a million pizzas. For example: “Can you feel the blood down your thigh, Enforcer she’ll fuck you dry” (‘Bathory’) and “Run rabbit run from the barrel of a gun, Run rabbit run before the rising of the sun” (‘The Huntress’). However, it’s all good fun, prompting me to dig out the ol’ dragon slaying VHS films.

Maybe baked and caked too much by its own neon-bleached glare, Witch Hunt: Road To Vengeance is both ruthless and toothless in equal measure.

Neil Arnold

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