Review: Witchrot ‘Soul Cellar’

There’s a slow, pedestrian paced start to Possession Deepens as the rumbling bass line from Jon Ferreira is joined by the sultry keyboard sound of Patrick Sherrard before Myles Deck enters the fray on drums. The echoed vocals of Lea Reto are something else, as they erupt with a stupendous sound that will shake items around you.

It’s quite an introduction to the jazz, doom and psychedelic fused world of Reto and guitarist Peter Turk, better known as Witchrot. Emerging from the underground of Toronto back in 2018, they create beautiful yet soothing soundscapes that are calming and enchanting with undertones of doom and lots of fuzzy guitars. It’s that sound that greets you on Tombstone with the haunting vocal, enticing you into their murky, dark sphere, like a lost ship heading towards jagged rocks. The solos keep you interested alongside Reto’s torturous wailings, as they soar and clamber over the music.

A low-end bass signals an eerie opening to Throat Cutter that’s accompanied by a spooky vocal before it goes off like a rocket with a crescendo of noise. It’s slow and brooding, and they vary the tempos well across its near six-and-a-half-minute runtime, but it will leave you feeling cold and looking over your shoulder for days on end. It’s a brilliant song, and one that I couldn’t get out of my head for ages after listening to it.

Die Alone feels a bit more of a traditional song, simple drum patterns with a cracking rhythm, so a change from what has come before, but still with that expressive vocal. It flows well, has variety, and that familiar shoegaze sound soon resurfaces in the middle section.

I sat back and admired the composition on Green River several times before writing about it. I closed my eyes and imagined being high up on a mountain looking at shooting stars in the dead of night, and this is the soundtrack to that thought. A quite divine piece of music that proceeds a fuzzed-out guitar sound that greets you like an old friend at the start of the following song Spineless. This is an album that will get you thinking as they’ve got atmospheric layers poured on top of more atmospheric layers, topped off with another layer, just to confuse and entice the listener.

The title, and longest track at just over eight minutes, Soul Cellar, brings up the rear of the album. You get to revel in that bulging bass sound one final time as the guitar flicks into action, like a slumbering beast awakening from decades of sleep. It’s a big, bold step for the band, as this is an evolutionary step for them, and with themes surrounding heartbreak and betrayal, they have nailed this album with flying colours.

Label: Majestic Mountain Records | Fuzzed And Buzzed Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Scribed by: Matthew Williams