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WITCHCRAFT |
 Witchcraft
are a bunch of young, dapper
Swedes who play traditional 70’s doom rock, weird and heavy and tinged
with cosmic dust and scruffy metal guitars. Frontman Magnus Pelander is
such a deadringer for acid casualty king Roky Erickson that “Firewood”
sounds EXACTLY like the Werewolf of Woodstock hisself auditioning for
Black Sabbath, circa Volume 4. And when I say ‘audition’, I don’t just
mean that Mag belts out lines like “My mother was a witch and father was a
preacher” with all the wobbly conviction of a teenage Satanist on a day
pass at the Black Church, I mean that the primeval -on-purpose production
has all the deep, booming, “our frontman might be a specter from beyond”
eeriness of classic Doors, setting Magnus about three volume notches ahead
of his very convincing 70’s death-boogie band. Witchcraft aren’t exactly
traveling to strange new vistas here – “Chylde of Fire” is as much vintage
Sabbath as “Wooden Cross” is prime Thin Lizzy – but the band manages to
mix and match their inspirations enough to keep things suitably, uh,
bewitching. I mean, when’s the last time you heard Pentagram riffs played
out of John Fogerty’s “Green River” guitar? Ok, so they may have forgotten
to throw in any influence from the last, say, 25 years, but for a crazily
authentic sounding dose of ancient, fuzz-faced, acid-eating devil rock,
then dive right into the deep, dark grooves of “Firewood” and feel the
doom, baby. |
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-Sleazegrinder |