Swamp Witch
The Slithering Bog
(Tribunal Of The Axe)
Deep and lush doom is cool, but individualistic deep and lush doom is even cooler. This perplexing void is reached through a sort of cold pranayama: a pulsing frost echoing in the forests of the West. It’s a state of mind: about blind vision and yogic mindscapes. Northern California’s Swamp Witch is equal parts satanic psychedelia and nightmarish solar flares. A flickering flame hovers across the ice and ocean. The band’s most current release The Slithering Bog, has in it, the esophagus of a fourth dimensional sub-earth monster, crawling and darting with wicked slabs of acid guitar.
It’s a really cool record. It’s dark and candle hellish, and has the spirit of true individualism, separating it epically from your traditional doom pack. Doom and sludge is great live and sometimes can lose its dazzling syntax when recorded to tape—but not so on The Slithering Bog—a circular orbit of grey wetlands and ethereal jaunts push this thing to the forefront of your skull: layering a cloud of infinity across your moist and dazzled eyes.
Swamp Witch pray to the motion of the off movement. They take their shots when nobody’s looking, and this is why they’re cool. Their deep and lush doom is pleasing and enchanting, with artful gallops and horrific strides. Bands like Grave Miasma and Disma come to mind, as Swamp Witch revels in an inner death metal nervous system. This special connection with forms known and not known creates a unique sound that is at once challenging and pulsing. Once you’re there, you’re quickly lost: getting wrung through the ether during “Dead Root”, as if you were listening to the Dead’s “Dark Star” while falling from Saturn to Polaris eating mushrooms like candy.
Purchase The Slithering Bog here.
