OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 29): WITCHING HOUR, IN THE WOODS…, AORLHAC

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  3 Responses »
Feb 192019
 

 

If you’ve been visiting us every weekday since January 8th, hungering for new installments of this list like famished wolves waiting to be fed, you undoubtedly noticed that the wolf-keeper had no flesh for you yesterday. Various events conspired to prevent me from finishing and posting the latest installment before my blog time ran out. In a small effort to make up for that, I’m beginning today’s posts with this new trio of entries instead of making it the last post of the day, which is what usually happens.

WITCHING HOUR

The first minute-and-a-half of this song was all it took to ensure its place on this list. I was convinced the first time I heard those opening 90 seconds. The rest of the song just reinforced the conviction, though it’s often very different from the solo guitar instrumental that comes first. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WITCHING HOUR — “AS I WALK AMONG SEPULCHRAL RUINS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 272018
 

 

“Blackened thrash” was an overly simplistic label for the music of Germany’s Witching Hour even in the case of their first two albums, 2009’s Rise of the Desecrated and especially 2011’s Past Midnight…, but it’s an even more superficial and inadequate way to describe their new record, …And Silent Grief Shadows the Passing Moon, which is due for release on December 21st by Hells Headbangers.

I suspect that most of us who are fans of black/thrash come to it for the blood-rush and the ferocity, for the feeling of demonic cruelty and chaos — intertwined with neck-wrecking riffs. What we usually don’t expect, and what Witching Hour deliver through the new album, are other dimensions of sound, style, and emotional resonance that give their music a mystical, dreamlike, and even somber aspect in the midst of all the slaughtering. Continue reading »