Hell yeah. I love a winning recommendation. A scant couple weeks ago — three now, I think — I stood in the aftermath of Planet Desert Rock Weekend V in Las Vegas, saying a few goodnights at the end of four killer days of music and hugs and such. Among the people I met was Phil from Phoenix, who asked me if I’d ever heard of Stone Witch.

Now, it had been a long fest and I was pretty out of it. Plus, it’s kind of a generic name. No, I didn’t know the band. I also didn’t know he was talking about a band. The way he said it, it kind of sounded like Stone Witch was a genre, or something else entirely. Less a band than a secret being shared, was how he said it. Like a regional delicacy cooked up with special Arizona seasonings, and not the ones they have in the Penzey’s catalog, but like maybe some regional dirt thrown in with all the spicey groove and classic flair.

Order of the Goat was originally released by Stone Witch as an EP in 2016 — at the time, the lineup was listed as guitarist/vocalist Jayare Robbins, lead guitarist Matt Wentz, bassist Ian Colbert and drummer Jason Colbert — and the original five-tracker was expanded to seven songs and 36 minutes in 2022. By then, the band had already offered their fuzz-slinging debut full-length, Desert Oracle, in 2019. So no, the album version of Order of the Goat featured above (on Wet Records, though Glory or Death and Interstellar Smoke had copies) isn’t the OG edition, but like I said, I didn’t know the band until Phil from Phoenix hinted that there was some grand mystery that I needed to solve as to just who or what Stone Witch was. I never claimed to be Johnny Groundfloor here.

They’re pretty raw, to start with. Desert Oracle smoothed out some of the grit that pervades in Order of the Goat — not all of it, thankfully — but the fact that these songs were recorded earlier even if they made it to a 12″ platter later shouldn’t be neglected. But the rawness becomes part of the character, like earliest Duel or any number of other hard-hitters who also happen to boogie down. Stone Witch most certainly do that, and while I don’t know the relationship between Ian on bass and Jason handling percussion — if they’re brothers, cousins, just people who have the same last name and play in a band together — I’m assuming they’re siblings simply based on the chemistry between them in the janga-janga shuffling “Wind Walker” or as the later “Oath Breaker” picks up the tempo heading into its solo section.

Rest assured, no attempt is being made to reinvent the wheel here, and this too works entirely to the benefit of the listening experience. Who needs to innovate when you can pull off a shuffle as tight as “Dark Goddess” or find a classic doomer roll in “Blood Feast” like some lost Pagan Altar track from 197X but still with room for an airy lead stretch from Wentz, or you have the monolithic low end distortion of “1903” — which wasn’t on the original EP but closes the LP — sitting in your back pocket the whole time? Stone Witch are a celebration of heavy rock from Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, plus more obscurities of the age, through Pentagram, Cathedral and maybe even some Fu Manchu or Kyuss, High on Fire and Monolord. A melting pot of heavy ideologies. But, crucially, they make it dance.

It’s hard to fight an impulse to credit Jason Colbert with that specifically for what he brings to the drums — the push later in “1903” is a fitting example, or the swing and proto-metallic lateral thrust behind the other not-originally-included cut, “Ghost Rider,” earlier on — and how it enhances the character of the material while furthering the sense of movement. “Blood Feast” digs into a chugging swing in its second half and the drums are right there making it happen; the band almost functioning in the ’70s power trio ideal, except with two guitars for extra punch of riff and to let the rhythm have extra force during solos. In any case, just as it’s so often the bass that gives heavy music its sense of heft, the momentum Stone Witch are able to harness across Order of the Goat comes from the fluidity of the drumming. When they’re kicking up dust on “Herald,” though, by no means are the drums alone in being all-in.

Is this the part where I wax poetic about the power of community in the heavy underground, express my wonder at the support this site gets and my thanks to Phil from Phoenix for putting the question of what and/or who Stone Witch was in the back of my head in the first place? Well, I could. It’s all certainly true. But you know it already, and as the four-piece space out a bit in “Herald” and jam their way to a finish that if you were drunk enough standing in front of the stage while it happened surely you would lose your addled mind — never mind the blowout that follows in “1903” — some big divergence from the central purpose here would be in the wrong spirit. Stone Witch very clearly went into their first EP with an idea of who they were as a band or at very least the sounds they wanted to worship, and the second album that’s resulted from that is richer for it. Yeah, the heavy rock underground is amazing, but more to the point the record’s a banger.

So, thanks Phil from Phoenix for clueing me in on a treasure of his hometown underground. I checked out the band’s socials to see if maybe there was something I could plug — maybe they’ve got a record out next week or some such — but not much really going on except some Reels plugging the vinyl. Not a criticism. Not everybody can or wants to play the ‘content’ game, and given the heart behind what they’re doing on Order of the Goat, I don’t think Stone Witch are much for bullshit generally. If you’ve heard it before, cool, if not, cool. I hope you dig it either way. It’s one I’m happy to have encountered, and at some point I’ll probably dig into Desert Oracle too. If that’s next week, so be it.

Thanks for reading.

—

Weird week. Monday there was no school, so The Pecan was hanging around. I spent the first half of the week fretting about getting Hungarian homework done and the second thinking about fleeing the country. Anybody in Europe got a home they want to open up to my family for, say, six weeks or until we can find a place to exist? Just a heads up, all your stuff will be broken if you say yes. The dog is really good though. She’s never pooped in the house. She did pee on the couch that one time in Budapest last summer though.

So maybe not lodging thanks to the kindness of strangers/internet acquaintances. So it goes.

Still, it is a compelling consolidation of power in the executive branch taking place, and the nakedness of the corruption makes me think maybe it’s time to call up one of those “I’ll help you pack”-type fascists and take them up on the offer.

I don’t know what that would do to this site, and honestly the safety of my family is a higher priority. I have a lot of fun here and I’ve seen and heard amazing things as a result of doing The Obelisk for the last 16 years, but if I need to drop it I will. I would not miss sorting links or images for news posts. I still suck at SEO. If I’m here, there, doing this or something else, I’ll probably keep writing in some context or other. I don’t know how else to live at this point.

Maybe you think that’s over the top, melodramatic. I don’t care. It’s where I’m at.

This weekend I’m traveling to Massachusetts to see the Worshipper 10th anniversary show and a bunch of old friends. That will be good. Show review Monday, then next week is full with a video premiere for Church of the Sea, a Make Money From Home review, I think a video premiere for Amammoth, and hopefully an interview with Matte from Sound of Liberation if I can edit the transcript in time.

If this week seemed light on posts, I was doing other stuff besides. In the last seven days I’ve banged out two band bios — for Witchcraft and Dwellers — and done two more edits/reads, for Temple Fang and Clamfight. That’s a lot for a week’s time. I have to do another album-bio piece too in the next couple weeks. I keep saying I’m gonna say no to that kind of work and then it’s like “so-and-so has a new record!” and I get excited because silly brain like shiny things.

I mention the bio writing to give myself a little grace on the week here. I wanted to review Make Money From Home yesterday morning to go up today, but the kid was up before I was in the morning, so I couldn’t get the usual jump on the day, I had one of the bios above to do that I’d promised would be in, and the review got pushed back. There’s a ton of stuff on my list though. That record, Yawning Balch, Naxatras, Year of the Cobra, Conan, Dirtmother, Kryptograf, Colour Haze’s To the Highest Gods We Know redux and, at the start of April, Lo-Pan. And I still don’t even know when the Dead Shrine record is coming out.

All of which, I guess, is my way of reminding myself why I do a Quarterly Review.

Whatever you’re up to, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Thanks again for reading, watch your head, be safe, hydrate. The bastards are lurking everywhere and they’re hidden in the code. Keep your head.

FRM.

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