Oakland-based sludge ritualists SWAMP WITCH have premiered their hallucinogenic new album Dead Rituals via Doomed & Stoned, which is set to be released tomorrow via Transylvanian Tapes.
Listen to the LP's worth of psychedelic nightmares at this location.
https://doomedandstoned.com/post/184739673363/swampwitch
Doomed & Stoned calls the album "four hefty tracks that cast a wicked spell of vengeance, filth, and dread." Writer Billy Goate also goes on to proclaim, "Beginning on a caustic note of feedback, 'Petrified in Sewage' takes us right into the mystery of the smoky swamp, charging forward with a forthright stomp and crunchy chords to lead the way. Then, the voice last heard in The Slithering Bog (2015) returns, shrouded in a cloak of dissonance. An excavation of sorts is happening here, unearthed by deterioration..."
Recorded by Greg Wilkinson (Brainoil, Autopsy, Fórn) at Earhammer Studios, Dead Rituals is a testament to all things slow and unholy. If metal extremes such as death, doom and sludge could be described using terms like "transcendent" or "metaphysical," then consider this California quintet to brandish a sound that closely resembles a drudging psychosis or sleep paralysis.
Since first congregating at the end of 2009 from within the empty expanse of California's San Joaquin Valley, their hypnosis-inducing sounds continued to amass, eventually leading them to the their current home in the Bay Area. With 2010's Gnosis EP, and 2014's The Slithering Bog LP releases, amongst countless shows, the band continues to hone their strange tendency toward unconventional modes of sonic destruction. Through psychedelic instrumental passages laced with the animalistic persona of sludge and trance-laden grooves that somehow reek of death metal, SWAMP WITCH have tapped into the murky subconscious of the extreme in order to nurture a truly horrifying sound.
More recently, the bands most potent strain of cosmic sludge has surfaced as the four-track full-length Dead Rituals, which serves as the band's most worthy offering into the bizarre pathways between otherworldly dimensions of cosmic death and doom calamities, dusty lost albums from the 70's, and the self-loathing punishment of yesterday's painful sludge classics.
FFO: Primitive Man, Conan, Cough, death doom
SWAMP WITCH is:
James Rauh - vocals
Phil Gallagher - guitar
Zack Gilliam - guitar
Jacob Reeder - bass
Zak McCune - drums
https://www.facebook.com/CosmicSludge
