WITCH MOUNTAIN
Mobile Of Angels
Svart (2014)
Rating: 8.5/10
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Portland, Oregon’s Witch Mountain is a doom metal band you really do not want to cross. On their fourth full-length slab of meaty melancholy they patrol even darker valleys and moodier corners.
For those yet to experience the trudging terror of this titan you have to go back to 1997 when the crushing combo was formed by drummer Nate Carson and guitarist Rob Wrong. Since then they’ve come on leaps and bounds, releasing their debut EP, Homegrown Doom, in 2000 and following it up in 2001 with a full-length exercise in Come The Mountain.
Sadly, the band took a lengthy hiatus in 2003, but thankfully returned from the shadows with 2011’s South Of Salem and then 2012’s equally gargantuan Cauldron Of The Wild, followed by a two-track self-titled EP in the same year.
Mobile Of Angels is a further example as to why Witch Mountain should be considered as one of the major league players when it comes to traipsing doom metal. Rather than bore the listener with a one-dimensional plod they are masters of invention by injecting the graceful yet bewitching vocal prowess of Uta Plotkin, who, like some woodland nymph entices the listener into the mire of pounding rhythms, enveloping percussion and staggering lead-weight riffage, which when all combined forms this impenetrable thicket we call Mobile Of Angels.
It’s fair to say that since Plotkin joined the ranks in 2009, Witch Mountain has become a beast happy to express its subtlety amidst its groans of decay and oaken lucidity. Doom metal seems to have lost its way over recent years due to its insistency to promote marijuana-drenched imagery, and with bands becoming slower and slower and certainly more boring through each trudge, Mobile Of Angels breathes life into an old dog and gives it new tricks. Sure, the engulfing power of the contemporary occult rock brigade hasn’t gone unnoticed by this bunch, who with Plotkin on board have a sort of wistful melancholy about their chug, but there are no daft gimmicks on board here as the band punishes the listener with its weight and then reveals itself like a monstrous serpent unravelling from its coils to showcase a wealth of burning, fizzing solos, immense percussion and those elegant vocal ripples.
As one would expect from a doom metal platter, the tracks are reasonably long but not once does this hinder the bands ability to rock. From the opening lazy nod of ‘Psycho Animundi’ to the effortless waft of closer ‘The Shape Truth Takes’, this is a sublime, multi-layered record carved from the oldest oak and laid before us like an impressive feast of sound.
Often spiritual in its glide, Witch Mountain are not the darkly-clad apparition we have come to expect in spite of their murkier brooding exhibited with the booming ‘Can’t Settle’ and the lengthy, surrealistic soundscape that is ‘Your Corrupt Ways (Sour The Hymn)’, which is one part nimble sprawl, the next an eerie, rainy chant. Mobile Of Angels is a kaleidoscopic tapestry of varying textures and colours, and one mighty fist plunged forth into the air in the name of doom metal.
Neil Arnold
