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WITCH VOMIT
Funeral Sanctum

20 Buck Spin (2024)
Rating: 8.5/10

A new Witch Vomit release is always a welcome sight. Funeral Sanctum is the third full-length outing from the Portland, Oregon-based band and comes wrapped in an almost wintry black metal styled slice of cover art. No surprise then that the chilly death metal carnage contained within is as aggressively relentless as many a black metal barrage as ‘Endless Fall’ erupts from the subtle ashes of instrumental intro ‘Dying Embers’.

The album gushes like an evil wind that swirls with menace, occasionally offering slower, brooding twists as evidenced on ‘Serpentine Shadows’ whose rich, shuddering content brings with a blackened fury while spattered with moodier riffs. However, for the most part this 30-odd minute outing is a frightful noise built upon icy riffs and a general permafrost feel which wasn’t apparent on previous records.

Witch Vomit now has more in common with, say, Dissection than the fetid pools of murky death metal, and while the opus is a tirade of utmost devastation some fans may not welcome the evolution. Still, it’s hard not to be impressed by the volcanic chills of the cacophonous title cut or the stifling assault of ‘Dominion Of A Darkened Realm’ with its impressive solo.

Funeral Sanctum is a stormy return from the Portland posse whose frozen landscapes and mid-90s impenetrable density suggests a band on a real mission that we can never truly understand or predict.

Neil Arnold

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