Back in Switzerland, I should be getting frequent flier points for all the time I am spending there are at the moment. Shame it’s only musically. Here we meet a doomy, blackened sorceress, namely Witch N who is now solely in charge of Ashtar. Following up from two previous albums, the last of which ‘Kaikuja’ was described as “heavy, moody and ominous” on this site. We now find ourselves ‘Wandering Through Time.’ Considering inspirations from our muse are Winter, Darkthrone, and Black Sabbath, rest assured we are going to do so slowly.

Leave behind expectations of anything resembling happiness at the door, we throb into opener ‘Into The Gloom’ and with a pulsating bass twang and stygian, slothful riffing there is little in the way of joy to be found. Vocals join in and are throat shredding rasps which very much bring the blackened and somewhat filthy aspects into the doom. Luckily there is also a strong melodic touch here making all the misery somewhat bearable although by the end of the six tracks you may well feel completely overwrought by the endless bleakness conveyed. There are also some fast aspects and the opener displays them with a ramp up of speed via the thudding drum salvo and fury meaning it’s not a plod all the way through. Songs are on the whole lengthy so there is plenty of scope to vary the pace. ‘The Submerged Empire’ continues to drown, apparently a tragic tale of the waterman but to me bringing visions of the work of JG Ballard. It’s sombre and enmeshed with the subtle qualities of the violin, another literal string to Witch N’s bow. It does help bring some beauty to an otherwise unfathomable darkness and although I had expectations of listening to something akin to Darkher going into this, by the time we dip into ‘Deeps Space And Dark Waters,’ it is evident this is the Yin and negative force compared to her Yang.

There is a bit of breathing space found in the shorter ‘Voices (Collide Again)’ and that voice is spoken beguiling in French and makes me want to hear some actual clean singing. It’s accompanied by the twang of the jaw harp and some soft tribal hand-beaten drumming. This kind of makes the guitar chug of ‘Summoning The Dryads’ all the more noticeable but those vocals are nasty enough to have any tree nymphs doing their best to stay hidden! The album is topped off with a lengthy cover version of US crossover act Post Mortem’s grizzly dip into the Coroner’s Office that is ‘I Want To Die.’ Like the original as this crawls out it does an admirable job of sapping the will to live and if Nadine the witch at the heart of this album set out to make an album coated in hopelessness, she has certainly achieved that goal. Unfortunately, that has somewhat made it a tough one to enjoy and although I totally agree with heavy, moody and ominous statement before, this is also a particularly tough and oppressive listening experience too.

(7/10 Pete Woods)

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