Summer may be here, but I still can’t turn down an opportunity to drown in the murk of blackened, doomy music and that’s exactly what we have on tap today. Threading a needle placed on the precipice along the intersection of doom, black, and a bit of death metal are Witherer, promising-as-hell Canadian newcomers that spelunk the deepest, cavernous depths to plunder nothing but the best in atmosphere and sonic weight.
Fans of Bell Witch and Spectral Voice will wanna click play immediately, but even those two massive comparisons don’t prepare you for the entire breadth of music Witherer plunder from the crust of the earth. Funereal at its core, the trio contends with world-ending measures built on cloaked guitars, pounding drums, and gurgling vocals forming tales of unknowable destruction. Now’s the time to heed their warnings as they prepare to rain oppressive darkness down with their debut album, Shadow Without a Horizon, officially out tomorrow, June 20 via Hypaethral Records, but premiering here first for all to witness and bear the weight of its earthen scale.
Shadow Without a Horizon is unabashedly, unmistakably doom. Standing tall and domineering at 53 minutes across five tracks, this LP slithers through speakers and coils up as soundscapes are built by dense and suffocating ambiance, the kind you can only imagine as moonlit and lonesome, vaguely dangerous and foreboding. Witherer then strike with envenomed fangs, piercing through with roiling melodies sang by ghastly guitars and clashing drums that bring to mind the total collapse of catacombs filled with centuries of bones and lost souls.
Those craving more action could skip to the single “Devourer of All Graveyards” which is teeming with destitute imagery (‘Smoldering within the crater of an unburied tomb; Specters mourn, freed of their bones, shaken free even of their names! Yearning for joy, for pain – Set free from breath, set free from thirst, pining in aeons‘), but then miss out on the 15-minute cataclysm that “Fiat Umbra (Burial Beneath The Stalactites)” provides. My favorite track though is probably “Solar Collapse Mandala”, a relatively quick clinic in lurching metal filled with spectacle and despair alike as the cosmos are cracked and ripped asunder like a child’s toy. In a similar way that a good movie is built up over the course of an hour or two to a satisfying climax for its plot and characters, so too does Shadow Without a Horizon toil and forge away in caves with no light and all manner of spectral monsters to leave its mark as an unshakable memento mori just as the band wished.
If you’re the type that often laments a perceived lack of fresh blood in metal, Witherer may just be the band you need to quell those cries. Let Shadow Without a Horizon zombify you, then preorder it digitally and physically through Hypaethral Records‘ Bandcamp page. You can listen to Witherer‘s first demo track ever over at their own Bandcamp and follow them on Facebook to watch their brand of end times slowly unfold.
Band photo by Mike Wandy
