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WITCHBONES
Night Of The Warlock EP

Witchhand Productions (2020)
Rating: 7/10

Since forming in 2018 the incredible Witchbones has been one of the most prolific acts within the death metal genre, coughing up handfuls of demos, EPs and three full-length records in that time. Damn, this year alone Witchbones has already issued the excellent Goety full-length, an EP entitled Poisoned Apple, and a split EP with Louisiana’s Vide. And now comes this five-track offering, Night Of The Warlock.

It’s astonishing to think then that this is all the work of just one man, Vardlokker… who certainly has a lot of talent in his, er, locker! Indeed, the Portland, Oregon-based Vardlokker is also the brainchild behind numerous other projects, such as Conduit Of Chaos, Nexwomb, Sangre De La Luna and the equally prolific Omnikinetic.

Anyway, Night Of The Warlock is another fine slab of bone-chilling doomy death metal. Actually, this is a surprise considering the main man was going to throw the project into the coffin, but I’m glad Witchbones – for at least one more time – continues to rain down like wet drizzle.

If you’re familiar with the sound or not, it can best be described as yawning, grey haze metal with flecks of black metal coldness. This is mostly developed from some dank cavern of misanthropy, whereby the vocals act more like grim evil echoes and the music provided grinds and oozes, flitting in-between a doomier veil and abysmal death metal vibrations.

‘Call Of The Triple Goddess’ is probably my favourite miasmic journey; a rather bleak, slow-paced ache of a track with a deep, gouging melody and cavernous croons of horror.

‘Impish’ is equally hypnotic. Here we have a lumbering, crushing dankness whereby all instruments gel as one heaving mass of grisly gloom; the guitars acting like some grinding rust-bitten generator that is fuelled by morose fuel. This is all rather bleak stuff, the outlook at once absorbing yet alien.

Closer ‘How The End Always Is’ remains remote, where again there’s that black metal feel; ambient yet rasping, grinding yet almost exquisite in its painful journey of persistent grating.

Devoid of hope and happiness, Witchbones latest (and hopefully not last) blot on the grim landscape remains the same in its unhurried yet hypnotic chimes.

Neil Arnold

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