Article By: Leanne Ridgeway
WITCHCRYER has been blazing through the States the last couple of years, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Recently signed on with Ripple Music, this heavy quartet’s ‘Cry Witch‘ album lets loose TODAY (Jan. 19th) and we have a world-premiere Official Video for the title track here for your triptastic pleasure.
Based in Austin, Texas, the four-piece Witchcryer is an old-school doom metal band as indebted to the heavy rock of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, and Blue Oyster Cult as to their doom descendants Witchfinder General, Trouble, and St. Vitus. However, they are securing their own hold, feet firmly planted with each step toward the future.
Created by guitarist Jason Muxlow during his time with Chicago doom band, Earthen Grave (also on Ripple). Javi Moctezuma (drums) joined in 2015 and later that year, vocalist Suzy Bravo (Hogbitch) and bassist Marilyn (Pillcrusher/ Las Cruces) became part of the fold.
Witchcryer‘s demo offering of ‘The Preying Kind’ was recorded and self-released in 2016, via their Bandcamp page (here). In May 2017, the band recorded their first full-length album – ‘Cry Witch‘ – and it was pressed and sold as an independent limited CD and digital Bandcamp release.
They played their first show in April 2016, and those live shows have won over audiences with every set. Witchcryer toured last year with Italy’s Messa and Destroyer Of Light, but for first hand insight click here for Gravitoyd’s show review from 2017.
Witchcryer’s debut album, ‘Cry Witch‘ is now due for world-wide release via Ripple Music – today – January 19th, 2018. Nine songs of classic doom, produced by Witchcryer and Brant Sankey (recording and mix engineer), are now also available on vinyl for the first time.
‘Cry Witch’ Tracklist:
01. Cry Witch
02. Ricochet
03. The Preying Kind
04. Ma Kali
05. Embryo (Instructions) instrumental
06. Great Divide
07. For the Slaves
08. Witchfinder General (Witchfinder General cover)
09. Lapis Philosophorum
The band has the quintessential heavy doom resonance, and ‘Cry Witch‘ starts things off with a guitar with just enough fuzz to make you itch for more, but those smooth as silk riffs and hooks will snare you in until the end. Pulverizing no-frills drums to set the pace with deep, gut-foraging bass lines, and then… the vocals enter this equation.
Ms. Bravo has a certain tone in her crooning, her voice is seductive, decidedly feminine, yet bears a simmering rage beneath it, and that angst slips out in every song. Witchcryer is not a band trying to mask a copy job past your ears as something new. Suzy Bravo is not pretending to be anyone else or a mere mimic of past female vocalists. For me, her voice is utterly invigorating. She has the pipes to breathe her fresh air into this powerful doom engine and keep it running clean and clear.
The ‘Cry Witch‘ album is not veiled in gimmick, nor is anyone going to be kissing your ass to get you to listen to it. But listen to it, you should. This record is straight-up heavy doom rock with zero frilly teasings, and it comes at you head-on to deliver one sexy platter of ass-kicking.
This band is dark, dirty, feisty, and beautifully themselves – to put it simply, this is some damned shit-kicking good doom rock, and it proceeds to rock heavily at that. You’ll welcome Witchcryer‘s aural assault with open arms… or simply be left discarded, bruised, and smiling through the tire tread marks they left all over your face.
We have a brand new Witchcryer psychedelic visualizer, created and produced by Gryphus Visuals, for the title track ‘Cry Witch‘ premiering for you today.
Some background on the title track from vocalist Suzy Bravo:
“Cry Witch” is a fictionalized account based on the story of Tituba, a slave from Barbados, who was transported to New England to serve a Puritan minister’s family. History books recount that she was the first accused witch of the Salem Witch trials, who was later released and little is known of what happened to her after she was spared the rope.
However, “Cry Witch” dramatizes an alternate account that perhaps she was responsible for stirring fear among her slave owners to exact revenge on the slave owners and their families. She turns them against each other by naming them ‘Witchcryers’, “Witchcryer you will be, your blood will be your enemy!”
Available on CD, digital download (via Bandcamp), as well as two vinyl LP variant pressings: the limited ‘Blue Witch’ edition and the ‘Blackest Night’ edition. Order ‘Cry Witch‘ via Ripple Music Webstore or Bandcamp locations.
