A Welsh one person project with a Welsh name (something like ‘a witch’ google tells me) and an album title in Latin which is ‘What I Want To See Below’ kind of had me nicely off balance if I’m honest. Add in the wonderfully unpredictable label and the promise of raw black metal it had to be worth a go.

Now over the years I’ve grown to cleave more and more to the raw side of black metal. For me it seems to still stir my soul in the way that it did all those decades ago, and has a simple honesty and intent that I find often hidden under over intellectualising and the seepage of post rock of too many modern bands. Not that raw black metal has to be simple; it can grapple with deep themes and atmosphere and surprising (to some) musicianship as well as anything. But it is direct, a feral howl without filter.

So Wrach. A long opening of dark ambience; drum beats, echoing sounds, a stream flowing or rain dripping, a crow. All building. Then the fast drums and the cry, the dark riff. The drum sound is a little thin perhaps but the vocals are just superb, buried in a cave as the guitar walks alongside the sprinting rhythm. It shifts into slow territory, really slow. Reminding me vaguely of Nortt with a little Teitanblood but only touches. Just something in the way it moves shadows. It moves tempo easily, present you with a swirl of sound that can overwhelm but has so much happening within it.

‘The Call Of Carnyx’ (I’m shortening the title…) once more has a funereal pace opening, the vocals writhing in some pit as a beyond merely sombre guitar line weaves around it. It turns feral as though smelling blood and seems to fuel it.

We plunge into ‘(The Throes Of The Covenant) Born From The Womb Of Chaos’ which again has that dark energy but there’s something beginning to pull me out of it by this point. Twenty six minutes have passed and instead of feeling as though I’m being dragged deeper, it’s kind of a plateau for me. The succinctly titled ‘Hail Death!’ is a slow serpent of funeral doom, tinged with a black rattle on the end, ‘(LI.B.C MMXXI) Ignis N.O.X. Delerium’ adds some monastic style chorals before sliding along the same route and the title track despite being the shortest follows too, all ending in ‘A Woeful Descent (Telos)’ which has a curious but excellent guitar tone, a hint of melody and a superb ambient ending that genuinely disturbs me from my state. And it is actually a fine way to close.

There’s nothing really wrong here at all except that it does begin to sound a little like one epic monomaniacal track both in sound and intent. There is clearly depth here, intelligence and a steadfastly raw approach. But for me at least there are also passages where it simply sticks to one path until my mind wanders to other pastures.

As a debut it’s good. The final track in particular shows a real grasp of more ambient soundscapes and reminds me of From The Bogs Of Aughiska’s approach but also there is a little too much where nothing really happens or at least nothing bites deep enough to keep me in its maw.

Worth watching though. I think a lot better will follow

(6.5/10 Gizmo)

https://apocalypticwitchcraft.bandcamp.com/album/quae-infra-volo-videre