Set to mess up every ‘Best of 2014’ list
Review by Jason Guest
Release: 31 December 2014
Two years after their last release, the 2012 full length The Grand Tormentor, Auckland, New Zealand’s Witchrist have re-emerged with the three-track Vritra featuring KzR of Bölzer on vocals. There’s only one thing that lets it down: it’s only ten minutes long. ‘Haruspex’ opens with a riff that outshines many a doom release of 2014. Seventy seconds in, the tempo picks up and the world disintegrates. With seamless shifts between the deliberate and the devastating, the bass-heavy murk of the riffs and the drums is enhanced by the sharp peal of the ride cymbal and KzR’s biting vocal attack. And with both ‘Transmuting Rituals’ and ‘The Golden Ascent’ sharing a similar approach, Witchrist’s juxtaposition of the slow and heavy with the savage and wrenching fuses the feculence of death, the bile of black, and the fuming rumination of doom into an utter bastard of a release that will mess up every ‘Best of 2014’ list.
9 out of 10
Track Listing:
- Haruspex
- Transmuting Rituals
- The Golden Ascent
