Witchery

Dead, Hot and Ready (Necropolis)
by Martin Popoff

The magic of this band (and lordy, there is magic) is that Witchery have unlocked the secret to pushing and prodding along metal fans one accessible layer back of black metal, a layer that is finding the new power metal too prissy, but finding the Norse cons and ex-cons too foreign, dark and mathematical. In essence, Witchery is crazy, shot-glass thrash metal that only allows its proud and professed love of more mainstream stuff (Ozzy, Accept, Priest) to leach out under the utmost discipline and control of the most sensitive cheese detector on the planet. Throw in a reincarnated vampire for a vocalist called Toxine, who is for all intents and purposes, a character that is an in-joke piss-take on the self-seriousness of the black metal bands, and you’ve got a band that is an instant and instantaneous phenom, just this explosive and fortunate marriage of disparate elements built by five distinct personalities, all with their areas of expertise, the combination of which is a metal thinktank the guys themselves probably don’t even appreciate fully. The record’s a little less immediate than its predecessor, a bit of a grower, at first listen, almost too casual and drunk, on subsequent spins, crazy like a fox. But see them live and you will have this pasted to your forehead like a badge of metal honour, the likes of which you haven’t felt the pride of spit-polishing since Bomber, All For One, Breaker, Torch, or Rust In Peace.
(PO Box 14815 Fremont, CA 94539)