Devouring Radiant Light

Fifteen years into their career, the Witch have never sounded more spellbinding. [21 Jul, p.54]

Tracks such as the blistering “Temple of the Sun” take no prisoners, taking little time before exploding into the kind of full-frontal assault we’ve come to expect from the heavier side of metal. Elsewhere “The Luminous Sky” takes a more frenetic approach though feels no less uncompromising, while “The Sacred Soil” closes out a record that not only shows exactly where Skeletonwitch are in 2018, but also where contemporary metal is at as well.

Sure, fans who swear by Skeletonwitch’s early work might take a while to warm up to anthems like “Temple of the Sun,” a tightly constructed barnstormer in which the band dares to toss clean-sung vocal harmonies into the mix, or “The Vault,” a Pallbearer-esque doom experiment that grows more blackened with each wailing note until its entire soundscape is torched to a crisp. And yet, even when their creative lodestar shifts its orbit, the Ohioans’ cornerstones remain intact: their virtuosic riffs, their robust production (once again courtesy of Converge guitarist and board wizard Kurt Ballou), their endearingly adversarial presence on-record--and, most of all, their diabolical joie de vivre.

A fun, taut, and compelling package of powerful black metal from a band of tried and true pros whose understanding of modern metal--and the subtlties and opportunities for bombast therein--is expert.