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Review & Full Album Premiere: Witchfinder, Hazy Rites

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[Click play above to stream Hazy Rites by Witchfinder in its entirety. Album is out April 1 on Black Bow Records.]

Witchfinder‘s Hazy Rites isn’t so much a melting pot as it is a steaming cauldron of influences from the sphere of modern doom, sludge, and tonal onslaught. To listen to tracks like “Satan’s Haze” and “Covendoom,” two 10-minute riff-pushers stacked right at the front following opener “Ouija,” the Witchcult Today-era Electric Wizard-fandom comes through rolling and massive in the plodding riffs, vaguely cultish theme, resounding tonal murk and the vocals echoing up from it. Yet, the subsequent centerpiece “Sexual Intercourse” has a different focus on melody that calls to mind Elephant Tree before turning later into vicious screams and sludgy nod. The penultimate “Sorry” — just speculation, but I don’t think the apology is sincere — turns similarly caustic, and even “Ouija” back at the outset is working with different methods, a slow initial unfolding that soon enough gives way to Conan-style tonal dominance and melodic shouting.

All the more fitting, then, that Hazy Rites should arrive as the Clermont-Ferrand, France, trio’s first offering through Black Bow Records, owned by Conan‘s Jon Davis, whose Blackskull Services has also taken them on as a management client. Witchfinder made their self-titled debut in 2017 and were given a look last year from Kozmik Artifactz for a vinyl release, but Hazy Rites, at a willfully unmanageable seven songs and 60 minutes makes that 40-minute four-tracker seem almost like an EP, and what bassist/vocalist Clément, guitarist Stan and drummer Tom bring to bear across the mostly-lumbering beast they’ve conjured is broader than the preceding record and also more sure of itself, with “Wild Trippin'” unafraid to dig into heavy psychedelic doom in the vein of Windhand early before Stan‘s guitar turns from its utterly engrossing thickness to take flight and lead a spacious apex section ahead of the swinging finish en route to “Sorry,” which follows. All the while, Witchfinder seem to be casting the elements from which they comprise their sound as a burgeoning persona, aided by the subtle turns of influence and periodic fits of shroom doom or more vicious sludge.

Among its other strengths, Hazy Rites is a reminder to just about anyone who hears it what a difference an excellent drummer can make. It’s not about the technicality in Tom‘s playing, but even the force with which he hits the snare in the second half of “Ouija” comes through in the recording, and he proves well up to the task of holding together the album at its foggiest moments, as on “Satan’s Haze” or the turn from the speedier swing to the stomping finish of “Sexual Intercourse” where he deftly accents his crash hits with the kick drum, the ultra-slow march of “Covendoom” and “Sorry” or the malleability he shows in closer “Dans l’Instant,” holding onto the central rhythm for a moment even as the church organ that leads the way out for the last two minutes or so comes on and seems to consume the track in progress. He wouldn’t have that work to do without the context of the entire band, of course, so I’m not trying to take away from what Clément or Stan add to the record — it would be ridiculous to do so — but it’s plain to hear even as the vocals sing out over timed crashes in “Dans l’Instant” before the last roll ensues that Tom is the kind of player who brings a band to another level.

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The production, handled at Satanic Audio in Poland, doesn’t hurt either, as the low end of bass and the alternatingly crushing and airy guitar become themes around which the songs function, and showcase not only a sense of what makes something heavy in terms of tone and groove, but how to use that as a foundation for exploration in songwriting. They’re not going so far out as to get lost — again, having those drums on the ground is a more than solid base to work from — but their style ends up being as much about atmosphere as about heft, and they don’t neglect either as the record plays out, whether it’s purposefully immersing the listener in “Satan’s Haze” and “Covendoom” back to back, or putting “Sorry” between “Wild Trippin'” and “Dans l’Instant” to add an element of the extreme amid Hazy Rites‘ most psychedelic fare. There’s consciousness at work here, addled though it might be.

Still, it’s the largesse that’s going to be the primary impression. The fact that Witchfinder sound huge as they roll their way through “Ouija” or “Sexual Intercourse” — the latter of which might also be the broadest-ranging cut they have here, with some touch of harmony to the vocals, an ethereal effects-wash of a solo, and then the turn before the five-minute mark to more forward-driving screamy sludge and the inevitable slowdown that ends it — is going to be the immediate standout factor. Echoing on Clément‘s voice adds to the sense of space in which the songs play out, and they dutifully fill that space with waves of distortion that seem bent only on pulling apart everything in their path.

But that’s not the end of Witchfinder‘s story, the deeper one digs in to Hazy Rites, the more one is likely to uncover, whether it’s in the melodies of “Wild Trippin'” or the brutality of the hits in “Sorry,” and the more satisfying the record ultimately becomes. Nod out if you must, but do so at the risk of missing the growth the band has undertaken in the couple years since their debut, and though it’s long at an hour’s runtime, that becomes part of the point of Hazy Rites in that it’s about creating the world this material inhabits even as the songs unfold. The converted will know what’s up — doom for doomers by doomers — and that would seem to be with whom Witchfinder are casting their lot here. Nothing wrong with that, certainly, and as France’s heavy underground continues to evolve, they seem primed to do just the same, whether that means more harmonies or tonal weight or screams or, preferably, all of it.

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