The spooky season may be over for some but for Acid Witch it truly is Halloween every day. Opening up their tombs in 2007 the band went on to produce Witchtanic Hellucinations in 2008 and the equally popular Stoned in 2010. Then followed a long gap without a new full length before 2017’s Evil Sound Screamers and now in 2022 through Hells Headbangers comes their fourth full album in the form of Rot Among Us.
The super silly mega Halloween/ Horror inspired campy intro track Gather Each Witch is an all out Doom crusher. The guitars come alive with classic Heavy Metal flare and the keyboards add a Dungeon Synth tone which when settled amongst the somewhat harsher vocals makes for a perfect storm. The title track kind of amps things up to a more ‘serious’ tone but there is still a lot of borderline Troma-like Horror silliness to get your teeth into, and hooks aplenty. I mean when you have songs titled Psychedeathic Swampnosis what’s not to love? Since the earlier days of Acid Witch I think the elevation in their presentation has skyrocketed. The catchiness is certainly a lot more apparent and their tone has become beautifully refined into something altogether more unique. Lumping the band into Stoner, Doom or Death simply isn’t enough now.
The beginning of 5508 Martin St serves as something of an interlude for the record. I actually feel it works really well and similarly to Gather Each Witch this is a song pumped up with all the madness of Acid Witch. I feel like when the band really lean into their craziness they totally come alive but outside of that they can fizzle into enjoyable but passable which is a real shame because they’re a band packed with talent. Evil Dad (Dad By Dawn) which is fantastically named is another ultra dumb, stupidly fun crusher that goes all out on the craze of the band, top tier stuff. In fact most of the second half of the album seems a lot heavier on the more signature Halloween stylings of Acid Witch, which is basically perfect and exactly what I would come to want and expect from the band. With Grundella The Green Witch the album comes to a wonderful closure, exceptional music with very little to fault.
Overall the album is musically everything I expected and wanted, with a few less exciting songs thrown in here and there. My only other tiny, and I mean tiny issue with this album (and the band in general) is that their gimmick is obviously very closely tied to Halloween. If you are the sort of Metalhead who doesn’t really embrace the holiday (highly unlikely) or doesn’t care for spooky silliness outside of the season (again, unlikely) then I guess you could say Acid Witch are a bit niche. Kind of like listening to Christmas music in the height of summer. However I feel like Halloween and Metal are so intrinsically linked that this should seldom be an issue for any listener really.
(9/10 George Caley)
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