WITCHING
HOUR
'Past
Midnight…'
(Undercover
Records/Evil Spell)
The first album of these Germans, 'Rise Of The Desecrated', was good – it was heavy and fast, but to be honest it was quite monotonous. Really - wasn’t standing out from the huge pack of upcoming black/thrash albums (some of them – real killers!). In 'Past Midnight...' those guys putted the mark on the melody instead of the heaviness for the sake of it. And it fucken works! Don’t get me wrong, but when a band “X” is betting on melody, their transformation in 99% of the cases is pure disaster. But Witching Hour did it. Their new album is varied, with cool riffs and some clearly epic moments! Yes, epic – like the opening riffs in „Black Countess” and „Total Possession”. Despite those “innovations” the album did not lost the aggression shown in 'Rise of..'. Even the opposite – underlines it! To the overall mush ill add the savage vocals of Jan, and the nice, cleaned production of the album, which makes it one of the best releases of 2011. Now...some bitching, of course. Everything’s great, but this whole “epicness” did some bad work for Witching Hour in some of the songs, where the riffs sound little “thin” and not fitting the overall conception (for example: the beginning of „Barbed Wire Lust”). But those moments are just few and couldn’t ruin the whole impression of this killer album. Recommended tracks: „Total Possession”, „Dark Unholy Night”, „Black Countess” (ESPECIALLY!), and „Black Horned Doom” (the fastest one!). So those guys are finally there – among the wolfpack of Blizzard, Nocturnal, Hellish Crossfire, Cruel Force, Erazor, Division Speed…its like 1942 AGAIN! Get this album on CD/Vinyl from Evil Spell/Undercover. [8,5]
(Nikolay Medarov)
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