Witchery - Don't Fear the Reaper
Century Media Records – 27/02/06
By Sam Brokenshaw
I'll preface this review by stating that I've never previously dug
Witchery, not entirely sure why but they never really appealed to me on. However, this new album appeared after a long absence of material from these guys so I thought it was high time to give them another chance. I'm pretty glad I did too, because this album turns out to be surprisingly listenable to me. Opening with the instrumental song, "
Disturbing the Beast" the band show off some variation somewhat near the style of "
Dark Intentions" from
The Haunted's second album. Slightly evil melodic thrash in Lehman's terms. Things kick off properly on the second track when the vocals kick in, which are surprisingly near to the black metal style. The riffing is pretty detailed and on the more technical side of thrash, reminding me somewhat of a mix between
The Haunted and
Yyrkoon's last album. The production is something roughly approximate to a slightly weaker and thinner version of
The Haunted's last outing. Yes, I'll stop mentioning that band, sorry!
Overall, and despite the bad choice of title, "
Don't Fear the Reaper" is a very competent piece of modern death/thrash with a side helping of traditional heavy metal style melodicism. Some time has clearly been spent on writing the music on offer here, and the result is that this effort is far from lazy and above average. Fans of that band I keep mentioning and their ilk would do well to pick this up and give it a spin.
7/10
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