Some metal albums are genuine classics, with tunes which burrow straight into your brain and stay lodged there for the rest of your life. Others are so ridiculously over-the-top you cannot help but love them despite their flaws. This debut album by Michigan maniacs Acid Witch definitely falls into the latter category. It even starts with a spoken word introduction (in a witchy voice), backed by Hammond organ and bubbling cauldron!

Be in no doubt; Acid Witch are doom through and through. After the spooky introduction, the first riff hits you like a reversing juggernaut. Acid Witch specialise in a fusion of psychedelic Black Sabbath inspired monstrous riffing, with an infusion of gnarly, dark and grim death metal. Normally I am fairly dubious about combining those two strands of metal together, but somehow the band manage to fuse them together into a dark, bubbling witches brew which is crushingly heavy, psychedelic, dark and grim all at once.  The guitar is sound is a huge fat slab of detuned distortion, the sort of sound that Reverend Bizarre and Saint Vitus would be proud of. The whole album sounds like it was recorded in a deep, dark cave, albeit a cave with a great producer.

The vocals are deep, unearthly growls, but somehow mix with groovy, blues laden riffs really well, and have some great atmospheric reverb on them.

This whole approach reminds a little of some of the early death/doom protagonists, when playing slowly was still a fairly new approach to extreme metal. In particular I am reminded of bands like Finland’s God Forsaken, who mixed Black Sabbath psychedelic heavy blues with dark death metal. This is not to say that Acid Witch are a carbon copy of those old bands however, they have a wonderfully over-the-top approach of their own. I absolutely love some of the cheesy psychedelic effects which are scattered throughout the 13 song opus, as well as the ludicrous song titles, such as `Swamp Spells’ and `Rabid Werewitch’.

I admit, I began listening with a cynical raised eyebrow, but after repeated listens, this album has grown on me like a damp, glistening fungus. As well as the crazy song titles and deliberately dated-sounding effects, Acid Witch really do have some very good song writing skills. There are some fantastic atmospheric, hypnotic passages, some truly great, extremely weighty guitar riffs, and some highly explosive guitar solos (which remind me a lot of old NWOBHM). The whole album has a wonderfully primitive, sludgy and grim vibe to it, and the heavy-as-lead production sets it off perfectly.

This is an old album; originally released in 2008. For a debut album, it really does stand out as an underground doom metal gem in my opinion, and I am definitely going to search for more material from this bunch of lunatics. I can only urge doom fans to meet under a full moon, and take a long draught from this witches cauldron.

(8/10 Jon Butlin)

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