The dictionary defines “catharsis” as “the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions”. It’s one of the first words that comes to mind in listening to the fusion of grindcore and powerviolence made by Iowa-based Closet Witch, and especially so in listening to the song that’s the subject of the Closet Witch video we’re premiering today.
This song, “To the Cauldron“, is explained by lead vocalist Mollie Piatetsky: “The song is about needing, wanting, yearning for comfort/advice/the presence of someone who is no longer on the earthly plain and the torment caused by this.”
The subject is familiar to many of us who have lost a parent, or both of them, or others who never had the kind of parent they wished for, or maybe never really knew them at all. Here are the song’s lyrics:
The trauma, the pain, I’m going made…insane.
I tug at my eye, no relief, there is the cry
How can I escape this pit
Where is my sanity
My bubbles flow over…
I’m calling…I’m calling…I’m calling…calling
I’ve reached to her, my mother, my crone
I need the nurture, I crave the light
Warmth and the knowledge – I need her to tell me I’ll be alright
I’ll get by
I’m constantly calling to you to get by
I’ve reached to her, my mother, my crone
I need the nurture, the light.
Warmth and the knowledge
I need her to tell me i’ll be alright, i’ll get by.
I’ve reached to her, my mother, my crone…I need the nurture, the light
Warmth and the knowledge, NEED her to tell me I’ll be alright, I’ll get by.
The trauma, the pain
Mad, I’m insane, tug at my eye, no release
Trauma, the pain, mad, i’m insane… I tug at my eye….I tug at my eye.
The words do express both yearning and torment, and maybe frustration and rage too. All that comes through in the song as a whole. If the music is therapy, it’s hard therapy, a catharsis that pulls no punches. It does indeed take us to the cauldron.
It’s good to have the printed words because Mollie Piatetsky screams them with such raw, blood-spraying intensity that what you get is unfiltered emotional power (even though rhythmically attuned). Nothing else in the song pulls any punches either.
The drums attack with unhinged fury. The bass rumbles and undulates from subterranean depth. The guitars generate a scathing blast-front of sound, like a gale of radioactive grit. The band also bring in skull-rattling clatter and bone-shaking piledriver bursts, and the riffing also begins to channel the darker sensations of torment and loss expressed by the words.
The drumming is a non-stop thrill-ride, the bass a non-stop throb in the bones, the vocals a white-hot furnace, but in the song’s upper reaches the music slowly wails and gradually sears, building toward the broiling heat of insanity.
Near the end, when the raging storm abates, the song becomes ethereal. It sounds like an angelic choir singing from an unreachable distance.
The accompanying black-and-white video was created by friend of the band Mark Warm. Filmed along wilderness trails but becoming hallucinatory, it connects with the song’s subject matter, following the experience of three friends who, one by one, disappear.
CLOSET WITCH is:
Vocals – Mollie Piatetsky
Drums – Royce Kurth
Guitars – Alex Crist
Bass – Cory Peak
“To the Cauldron” is from a November 2023 Closet Witch album named Chiaroscuro that’s now available on variant vinyl editions from Zegema Beach Records. We’ve included a full stream of the album after the following links.
The album includes synth and organ performances by Stu Cline. It also includes guest appearances from Dylan Walker (Full Of Hell) and Dan Lee (Wanderer), among others.
TO ORDER:
https://zegemabeachrecords.bandcamp.com/album/chiaroscuro
https://shop.momentofcollapse.com/collections/closet-witch
TO FOLLOW CLOSET WITCH:
https://www.instagram.com/closetwitchband
https://www.facebook.com/closetwitchband/