Purple Hill Witch - S/T (Album Review)

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 27/7/2014

Label: The Church Within Records

‘Purple Witch Hill’ CD track listing:

1). Queen of the Hill (07:56)
2). Astral Booze (06:39)
3). Final Procession (07:44
4). Karmanjaka(05:02)
5). The Landing (04:38)
6). Aldebaranian Voyage (Into the Sun) (03:33)
7). Purple Hill Witch (11:11)

Bio:

Purple Witch Hill is a doom metal trio from Oslo Norway. They formed in 2010 and released a demo called Doomstone Blues in 2011, an EP called Alchemy in 2013, and their first full length album, Purple Hill Witch, in 2014.

Purple Hill Witch is:

Andreas Schafferer | Bass

Oyvind Kvam | Drums

Kristian Ingvaldsen | Vocals, Guitars 

Review:

You would think that sometime the world would slow down it’s production of these trippy, fuzzed out doom albums, but I really don’t think that the doom machine is showing signs of stopping anytime soon. As long as bands like Purple Hill Witch keep popping up, there really isn’t any reason for the world’s doom metal production to slow down, either. With the amount of doom metal that is out in the world already, I have enough to occupy me for the rest of my life, despite the fact that it makes up at least 75% of what I listen to on a daily basis. However, every time I go on bandcamp to look at new music, there is a constant supply of new doom albums that are continuing to perfect the art of blending the vintage sounds of Sabbath, Pentagram, Vitus, all those guys, with their own style.

Purple Witch Hill is definitely one of those bands. It can be hard for bands in the Stoner/Doom genre to distinguish themselves, since it can be very easy to fall into a fairly generic sound, but PWH gives just enough variety to keep you listening, but still keeps one consistent sound throughout the album, which is always good. As a listener, you can tell that these songs are all meant to go together – there aren’t any duds, these aren’t just the first 7 songs they wrote and decided to toss onto the album.  In my own humble opinion, and there are countless exceptions to this rule but I still think it holds some kind of validity, a power trio is the setup that allows for the most creativity in doom, and I would use Purple Witch Hill as an example of this any day of the week.

The band can come together and rock hard all together for the main riffs of a song, but can jam out and do their own thing during solos or longer instrumental breaks. If you really pay attention to the bass in the song ‘Final Procession’, it is clear that Andreas Schafferer really knows when to follow the guitar, when to follow the drums, and when to break off and give us some nice little bass lick behind everything else. This is a quality I also attribute to Geezer Butler, so you can clearly see the influence there.

Kristian Ingvaldsen, the guitarist and vocalist, brings that same element of Sabbath worship to the table, but somehow holds down the role of Ozzy and Tony. This is a guy who consistently lays down badass riffs for a full 48 minute album without a single boring moment, his only break being a few well-placed, well-written solos. Check out the track ‘The Landing’ for what is probably his most Sabbath-influenced song (although they all really do channel the Sabbath very nicely), from its slow, epic riff starting the song off, to his slow, deliberate solo, to the faster breakdown, very reminiscent of the breakdown in ‘Hand of Doom’, to his Ozzy-esque vocals.

All-in-all, this is a great album for someone who doesn’t like their metal to deviate too far from Ozzy era Sabbath, but still likes the nice fuzzy sound of Electric Wizard or other more modern stoner/doom.

Words by: Alex D.

You can pick up a copy here

For more information:

https://www.facebook.com/PurpleHillWitch

Trysth - Soulchambers (Album Reviews)

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 08/11/2014

Label: Self Release/Serpent Eve Records

'Soulchambers' CD/Cassette/DD track listing:

1). Descend (01:17)

2). Spine of Snakes (06:08)

3). Ordeal Vision (13:06)

4). Sever the Stars (10:23)

5). Weeping Orbits (04:31)

6). The Undying (16:14)

The Band:

Georgi Yoshovski | drums
Asen Santev | guitars
Yavor Dimov | bass/vocals

Review:

In order to really enjoy Trysth’s album ‘Soulchambers’, you have to have some faith. As with any good music in the doom metal genre, there are some boring moments on the album if they’re taken out of context. When listened to as a cohesive bit of art, though, ‘Soulchambers’ is like a journey, always one step ahead of the listener, toying with them.

The first seven minutes of the album, a one minute instrumental intro followed by the six minute ‘Spine of Snakes’ (also instrumental), are a masterpiece themselves as far as tension building goes. The distortion doesn’t even drop until two minutes into the song, leaving the album with a three minute intro of just abstract noises and trippy guitar coupled with an almost tribal drumbeat. Once the nice, heavy first riff of ‘Spine of Snakes’ comes in, you can feel it even more, and you’re waiting for it to go all the way – ready for someone to start screaming at you, ready for some shredding fuzzed out, wah-heavy solo, ready for a chorus, a verse, anything, but Trysth isn’t going to give it to you that easy. The steady increase in tempo subsides eventually coupled with a slow outro solo to usher in ‘Ordeal Vision’, which is where the album really kicks it into overdrive.

This thirteen minute epic initially picks up where ‘Spine of Snakes’ left off, keeping up with the slow intense riffing that you can feel all the way in your gut, even if the volume isn’t turned up all the way (but if that’s how you’re listening to the album, fuck off). Once Yavor Dimov’s vocals come in, you realize why this first verse deserved what was essentially nine minutes of intro by this point. As soon as he opens his mouth, you feel like he’s ready to rip your heart out and eat it – he can belt out an evil throaty growl that doesn’t sound cheesy, doesn’t sound forced, just sounds like the perfect embodiment of anger and suffering.

By this point alone, Trysth had me won over, I liked the album… then they started their crazy chanting in the middle of the song, feeling like it could worm its way into your brain and really fuck things up. Now I definitely liked this album. I could be mistaken, but it sounds like he’s using the Tuvan throat singing method at this point (look that up, its nuts). So many stoner/doom bands these days use chanting in their music, and I feel like it can really be a cop out at times. Here, though, it just feels so natural. Dimov’s screaming is so intense that you’ll feel like you need to just sit back and listen to some weird fucking Tuvan throat singing chanting in between verses before you come back for more.

By the time I had listened through all of ‘Ordeal Vision’, I was almost worried that they had peaked. The first 20 minutes was so goddamn intense and, excuse the cliché, it was like a roller coaster of emotions, going between blistering, evil, heavily soul crushing riffs and screaming to their deep soulful clean bits, that I didn’t know where the rest of the album could go from there.  ‘Sever the Stars’, though, the 10 minute fourth track of the album, is the most important song on the album. At first, it tricks you into thinking its just filler to come after ‘Ordeal Vision’. It starts out with so much reverb you feel like you’re in the bottom of mile-deep cave, and it drones on for four repetitive minutes. Trysth seems to know how the listener is going to feel by this point – impressed with the start of the album, but probably a little bit bored with the four minute intro to ‘Sever the Stars’. It brings you intro a trance, and you let your down your guard, so that when they unleash the ridiculously heavy, damningly powerful riffs during the remainder of this song, you’re totally knocked off your feet. They really know how to bring the hammer down here. And when the hammer comes down in this song, it comes down fucking HARD. Like knock the wind out of your chest, hard.

I said earlier that this album was like a journey. ‘Sever the Stars’ is the destination. The first 20 minutes of the album got you so pumped up for the badassery unleashed on this song, and the 20 minutes after it serve as an outro for this song, the nice short interlude ‘Weeping Orbits’ followed by ‘The Undying’ slowly bringing you back to reality, while still being a great song on it’s own. If someone were to tell me this whole album is based off of one awesome song, and yet the whole album is still one cohesive bit of interesting music, it might be hard to believe. But Trysth knows what they’re doing, they know how to build the pressure, they know how to kick your ass, and they know how to usher you out once you’re done.

Words by: Alex D.

You can stream the track ‘Sever the Stars’ here

For more information:

https://trysth.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/trysthmetal

http://serpent-eve.blogspot.co.uk/