Witchthroat Serpent – Demons Left To Roam
Witchthroat Serpent – Demons Left To Roam
Heavy Psych Sounds
Release Date: 09/10/26
Review by Dark Juan
987,654,321/10
Now, minions, cower before my awesome and puissant majesty. I am Dark Juan and I am not merciful. Satan is my bitch and God a mere affront to me. I am almighty, and unbreakable and inflexible. My word is Law and my Law is destruction. Displease me and you will be judged and judged harshly, for the Law must be cruel and equally applied to all. It matters not to Dark Juan whether you be king or pauper, queen or prostitute, if you have disregarded my Law then you pay with your blood, drawn personally by Dark Juan with tooth and nail, blade and buzzsaw. Justice is blind, and justice is inevitable and it will weigh heavily upon thee when I enact my justice.
Fuck knows what was going on there. I wrote that last night and it would appear that my normally well-hidden sense of overweening over-importance had got out and was making merry with my hypothalamus. It’s probably fatigue which did that thanks to the canine vomitapocalypse Dark Juan was contending with last night. There has been no sleep and Dark Juan is running on caffeine and sheer bloody-minded stubbornness right now. Time to rouse the Platter of Splatter ™ and place a reverent new offering upon it before we discover that our usual level of misanthropy is a mask enabling me to function in society without butchering everyone in a half-mile radius, because people are fucking annoying. This is why Dark Juan is no longer allowed weapons.
My chosen offering today is another one from my beloved French Metal scene, being “Demons Left To Roam” by Witchthroat Serpent and by jingo it’s heavier than a Supermax tanker full of ex-Soviet steroid-filled shot-putters all named Svetlana wearing neutronium brassieres and big fuck off combat boots.
Let me tell you all this now – if you are looking for a speedy, energetic record with a crystal-clear production, you’re not going to find it here and you should probably look elsewhere for your fix of Metal. However, if you are into sub-Sabbathian grooves and more fuzz than the fuzziest beards of the local CAMRA group (for those of you who are not British, CAMRA is the Campaign for Real Ale – a fine organisation apparently peopled by ex-geography teachers wearing greenish tweed sports jackets with leather elbow patches and a worryingly potent brand of body odour, “sports” slacks or cavalry twill trousers and brogues (never Oxfords, always brogues) normally found clustered into a corner of the scuzziest pub in the local area, hissing venomously at anyone not drinking their beloved ale made from woodshavings, sorrow and sticks and brewed by a man called Steven in a shed on a moor in a really inaccessible place in North Yorkshire and being terribly upset when their game of dominoes has been interrupted by someone attempting to access the conveniences), heaviness that is measured in gravities instead of tonnes and elongated grooves that stretch into previously undiscovered universes, then, my friends, I recommend Witchthroat Serpent mightily to your attention.
By all that’s holy and everything that isn’t this album is RAW – the bass so fuzzy that it’s like taking a chainsaw to the guts and the guitar that rough and serrated that there are times when Witchthroat Serpent become actually painful to listen to. Frederik Bolzan’s vocals range from agonised screaming to the kind of wistful pain that Ozzy made his own. The music is not fast, either. A Witchthroat Serpent song is analogous to continental drift – agonisingly slow but absolutely inexorable and unstoppable. In short, it is not a listening experience – it is something devastating that is happening to you and renders you powerless to resist any outcome. It’s shrieking feedback and the grinding together of mountain ranges just before cataclysm. It is the collapse of buildings and the downfall of society in the form of music. There are no protective factors here – you are flayed, staked down and helpless, every nerve exposed and brutally overstimulated with sensation. Every sense amplified beyond normal human comprehension as you whimper and cower in the face of overwhelming power.
Now, it is well known that Dark Juan is a massive fan of Doom Metal. This cannot be denied and neither am I going to, but this album somehow transcends the bones of the genre. It is PITILESS. This band do not care what damage they are causing to you as they bludgeon you with music so powerful it pushes you back in your seat and pins you there, staring directly into your eyes with a blunt, yet still focused mania that is terrifying to behold. Witchthroat Serpent have taken Doom and weaponised it, made it crimson with spilled blood and dripping viscera while they explore the outer realms of human experience and increase the rage, the distortion and the fuzz up another 10% just for shits and giggles. “Demons Left To Roam” has all the power of early Electric Wizard but adds a curiously listenable quality that makes it even more horrifying, and horribly compelling – even the closing track “The Zany Magician” has this when it is the closest thing to a new Sabbath song not written by Sabbath. Even though it has one of the fucking COOLEST organ solos I have ever heard – I’d even go as far as to say it moves away from Doom Metal and into the kind of Heavy Blues that Sabbath were adamant they played at the start of their career, and it made a very pleasant change from the unremitting grimness of the rest of the record, a slightly lighter, more whimsical side of the personality of the band and a welcome palate cleanser from the unremitting, slow grinding grimness of the rest of the album.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System is rumbling in a rather worrying fashion and there’s sparks coming from it while it calculates the total score for this most awesome of records. Wait… there’s something coming through now.
987,654,321/10. AAAND there’s been an explosion.
TRACKLISTING:
01.Cursed Night Circle
02.Doctor Terror
03.Silver Bell of Satanic Ritual
04.Lost Dimension
05.The Blinded Magpie
06.The Zany Magician (Eloy cover)
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
